TCS (This Century Sucks) is one of the first Blogs I ever read. I blame them
for getting me into this whole blogging thing. I have been a big fan of their
work for a long time. The Liberal Igloo is my more recent favorite. Greg does
great work and is starting from the bottom. I have tried to send both of these
great pages a few hits because they deserve it. They are very informed and
funny. Just the way I like it.

So a congrats to them is in order. Well played. May your hit counters be exponentially
expanded.

I
haven't been going into depth on the "Gannon" controversy because
news was just breaking so fast and others were doing such a great job on this
one. Americablog
is the go to Blog for news on all the news you could possibly want in regards
to certain military-stud-male-prostitute-'reporters'. I swear this stuff reads
like fiction but this is the seedy underbelly of the republicans seeing
the light. It happens very rarely, but when it does it tends to make noise.
FOIA's have been
submitted and Democratic Senators are going into attack mode on this
one as they should. The election results from Iraq are coming in and it looks
like the
U.S. might be in for a surprise. To top it all off Greg over at the
Igloo has another great smackdown
for Faux 'News'.

Should
keep you all busy for a second.

-
Jordan

It's
about time!

The
Washington Post is reporting that two reporters might be jailed if they refuse
to answer questioned in front of a grand jury in regards to the Valerie Plame
case. If they know what is good for them they will just testify and stop bending
over backwards to protect the very people that used them and then tossed them
aside.

A New York Times reporter and a Time magazine reporter can be jailed if
they continue to refuse to answer questions before a grand jury about their
confidential conversations with government sources, a federal appeals court
decided this morning.

The decision upholds a trial court judge's ruling last year that Judith
Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine should
be forced to answer these questions or be sent to jail. Both reporters fought
to stop a subpoena from the Special Counsel to appear before a grand jury
investigating whether senior Bush administration officials knowingly leaked
the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert operative, to the media in the summer
of 2003.

Lawyers said both the New York Times and Time magazine will seek a stay
of the decision, to avoid having their reporters go to jail, while they
appeal to the full appeals court and likely to the Supreme Court. But that
request for a stay would have to be granted by Chief U.S. District Judge
Thomas F. Hogan, who first held Miller and Cooper in contempt of court and
ruled they must obey the subpoena.

The United States credit card industry rakes in $2.5
billion a month in profits ­ largely in fees and interest charged
to the American consumer. But its thirst for additional profits is insatiable.
Credit card corporations are showering
Congress with cash in an attempt to squeeze every last dime
out of those who can afford it least to by making it harder for them to get
out of debt. The industry is pushing for a bill that would deny bankruptcy
relief to "people with low or moderate incomes who have fallen
on hard times because of illness, job loss or divorce." Meanwhile
the bill does nothing to stop "abusive lending practices by credit card companies."
(Share your thoughts on the bankruptcy bill at ThinkProgress.org.)

INCREASED
BUREAUCRACY: The bankruptcy bill is an attempt to prevent people from
filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy ­ which gives people a clean slate ­ and make
them file under Chapter 13, which requires continued payments to the credit
card companies. Already, judges
can deny Chapter 7 protection if they think the law is being abused.
The bankruptcy bill would require consumers to complete
a complex array of forms to "prove" they qualify for Chapter
7. The law would also require those seeking Chapter 7 protection to "obtain
counseling from a court-approved counseling center before filing." But according
to the American Bankruptcy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization,
just "3
percent of people who file under Chapter 7 could continue to
pay under a court-supervised plan if they filed under Chapter 13." So the
real impact of the bill would not be to prevent abuse of the system but to
"make
filing for bankruptcy much more costly" for those who genuinely
need it.

The other piece is an in in-depth dissection of Dick Morris' lies in his piece
about Condi v. Hillary in four years that appeared yesterday. Greg catches
him with his pants down as it were. Check
it out.

-
Jordan

Gannongate
- A starter kit

For those of you who haven't heard of this scandal here is a primer.

This is another frightening example of how this administration has used propaganda
like no other administration. Faked news stories, paying reporters to promote
white house policies and now this. This is also a great example of how Blogs
are doing the work that the main stream media should be doing. Note how once
the Bloggers at Dailykos blew this story wide open the main stream media came
limping in after the fact.

To get us up to date lets look at the Gannongate starter kit made by the diarists
over at daily kos (This is edited. Click here
for the complete version):

Prompted
by a Jan. 26 report by MediaMatters.org regarding Guckert's "softball"
questions to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan and President Bush,
members of DailyKos, an online community, began investigating the matter.
[...]

In his Talon News profile, Guckert claimed he had a degree in Education
from the "Pennsylvania State University System." His only
journalistic "experience" was attendance at the Leadership Institute
Broadcast Journalism School. [...]

Guckert's "training" at the Leadership Institute was a two-day
seminar, tuition for which was $50.

Despite his lack of journalistic experience, Guckert used an assumed name
and was granted access to the elite White House Press Corps. [...]

In a press briefing on Feb. 10th, White House Press Secretary McClellan
claimed that Guckert was granted White House access because he "showed
that he was representing a news organization that published regularly."

However, Talon News came into existence on March 29, 2003. It was
granted White House Press Corps access just four days (approx. 96 hours)
later. During that four-day time period, Talon News published a total
of nine "stories." [...]

According to the Washington Post, Guckert may have had access to a leaked
internal CIA memo which revealed the identity of Ambassador Joe Wilson's
wife, then an undercover CIA operative. [...]

For the complete unedited version of the Gannongate primer click here.

The
main stream media chimes in:

Democrats
Want Investigation of Reporter Using Fake Name
Two Democrats in Congress are pressing for investigations into how a Washington
reporter who used a pseudonym managed to gain access to the White House
and had access to classified documents that named Valerie Plame as a C.I.A.
operative.

The Democrats, Representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan and Louise M.
Slaughter from Rochester, wrote yesterday to Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent
prosecutor appointed in the Plame case, seeking an investigation into how
the reporter, James D. Guckert, who used the name Jeff Gannon, had access
to classified documents that revealed the identity of Ms. Plame.The
rest

For
those of you lookin for more here are two great video clips of news stories
concering Gannongate. One is a CNN piece and the other is from MSNBC's Countdown.
Both are very well done. The Countdown one has great video of the actual softball
questions Gannon was throwing to McClellan.

In
the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed
dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al
Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide
operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission
[...]

Mind
you this is aside form the many warnings Bush received including the now famous
PDB memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack the United States"
which
Rice mentioned to the 911 commission. For more information on the
many warnings Bush recieved that mention Al Queda and their plans to attack
the united states, just read chapter 8 of the 911 Commission report, whis
is aptly named "The
System Was Blinking Red". (PDF)

But I digress...

The
report takes the F.A.A. to task for failing to pursue domestic security
measures that could conceivably have altered the events of Sept. 11, 2001,
like toughening airport screening procedures for weapons or expanding the
use of on-flight air marshals. The report, completed last August, said officials
appeared more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays,
and easing airlines' financial woes than deterring a terrorist attack. [...]

Among other things, the report says that leaders of the F.A.A. received
52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. bin
Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half
of all the intelligence summaries in that time.

52.
Not a few, not a couple, but 52. This is not negligence. This is gross incompetence.
This is the White House classifying, as secret, a paper that shows them for
the frauds they are. The real kicker though was when I read this passage:

The
Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified
version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much
to the frustration of former commission members who said it provides a critical
understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system.

Now
the question begs being asked so I will go ahead and do the asking. Why would
Bush want to stop the release of this report? What does he have to hide from?
I think people know by now that Bush had enough warnings about a possible
attack that he should have taken some kind of action. Tightening airport security,
public posting of the faces of the Al Queda members that they knew had entered
the United States, increased armed air marshals on flights etc. Bush did none
of this. Not only did he neglect to prevent the attack but he is now trying
to hide this fact by blocking the public release of this report. If you look
at this it is almost as if Bush wanted the attacks to take place. Thats
right I said it.

Lets take a flash back to the past. Let us revisit a little paper written
by a group of warhawks that included such names as Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney,
Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. The paper these people wrote
is called "Project
For a New American Century" and the portion I will cite comes
from a sectioned entitled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses".
This can be found
on the PNAC web page as a PDF. The PDF cites many goals including
increasing a permanent military presence in the Middle East, fighting and
winning multiple simultaneous wars throughout the world and increasing military
spending. All very nasty stuff. But the interesting part comes on page
63 of the PDF:

"Further,
the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event 
like a new Pearl Harbor." (emphasis added)

Now
that is interesting indeed. In order to quickly achieve their stated military
goals and to maintain global super power status, they would need a Pearl Harbor
type event to take place.

So
lets review.

-
They needed a "catalyzing event" to take place to achieve their
goals quickly.

- They had received plenty of warnings about the possibility of an attack
by Al Queda within the United States.

- On 911 Bush sat and did nothing to counter the attacks as they took place.

- No fighters were scrambled; no response was made until it was too late.
He sat and read about goats when he could have been saving thousand of lives.

- Bush is blocking the release of the CIA report that will show his negligence.

More
disturbing info coming out on global warming's accelerating pace...and
the forces that continue to try and cast doubt over it, "Between industry-funded
groups like the Greening Earth Society and the Science and Environmental
Policy Project, and conservative mouthpieces like Limbaugh, there
is no shortage of press releases and sound bites decrying each new
observance of global warming's effects.

FUNDING
FOR ABSTINENCE-ONLY PROGRAMS INCREASED: Apparently, President Bush isn't
concerned that abstinence-only programs are misleading the nation's
children about sex. A study last year found that some of the
most popular programs pushed lies, such as claiming that mutual masturbation
can cause pregnancy and condoms fail to prevent the transmission of
HIV 31 percent of the time. President Bush's budget increases
funding for abstinence-only education by $39 million, to a total of
$209 million.

Just
after our so called elected president gave his Sate of the Union Speech the
phone rang. My fiance answered and it was an organization conducting a poll.
Happy to participate she began answering questions. "No..... 10. No....
Strongly, 10..." I was very curious what it was all about. I figured
it was about the presidents speech. That his minions were polling to see which
of his lies were the most palpable to the people. Nope. When she hung up she
told me it was mostly about family issues, but there were a few question that
they snuck in there that seemed off topic.

"would you support Condi Rice as a presidential candidate in 2008?"

"No"

"How strongly do you feel on this issue from 1-10, 10 being the strongest"

"Strongly....10"

Oh crap here we go. With "president" Bush elected the GOP casts
its eye to 2008. This is how the GOP works. They are not loyal to the president.
They are loyal to the party. Already they are working to make sure they remain
in power in 2008. Bush is a lame Duck president now. Already the GOP have
stopping toeing the line with him. When he released his budget yesterday it
was not
only democrats who objected to his obscene proposal

As
President Bush began promoting a 2006 budget plan that calls for reductions
in an array of popular domestic programs, congressional Republicans started
searching for ways Tuesday to achieve his overall deficit-reduction targets
without slaying such political sacred cows as farm subsidies and aid to
states.

Many of the proposals in Bush's $2.57 trillion spending plan drew fire not
only from Democrats, but also from members of the president's own party
who are reluctant to cut programs because they -- unlike Bush -- will face
re-election in 2006 and beyond.

Concern about persistent budget deficits, as well as resistance to deep
spending cuts, could make it harder for Bush to achieve other priorities,
such as making his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who provided a key vote for Bush's tax cuts,
said he now opposed making them permanent because of the deficit.

Now
the Republicans have to worry about 2006 and 2008. They will not blindly support
the president budget which slashes education, health care and scraps
9,790 border patrol agents. They have the 2006 election to worry about
and they can't be seen as weak on education andsecurity. So they question
the wreckless budget Bush puts forth. A budget that will increase the deficit.
All this without even adding the numbers for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not to mention the Trillions of dollars that will be added to the deficit
when Bush tries to "Fix" Social
Security Bush will find it harder now to sell his lies to the american
people now that the Republican party is looking to the future. A future that
does not have Bush in it. The strategy is to undermine the Democratic base
and pull some of our votes away by running a black woman. They can sense that
Hillary is going to run. A woman candidate would energize the Democratic party.
So they are testing the waters to see how to counter that. It
seems Rice is their answer.

The
political fact is that a Rice candidacy would destroy the electoral chances
of the Democratic Party by undermining its demographic base. John Kerry
got 54 percent of his vote from three groups that, together, account for
about a third of the American electorate: African-Americans, Hispanics and
single white women. Rice would cut deeply into any Democrats margin
among these three groups and would, most especially, deny Clinton the strong
support she would otherwise receive from each of them.

So
they want to run an African American woman as president to undermine Democratic
votes. Once again integrity and honesty and ability are all thrown out the
window in the name of strategy. They will run as a candidate the very person
who lied to us about Iraq. The woman who brought us such great hits as:

Oh
Condi you devil you. So the Rethugs will once again run on incompetence. Running
the woman who was National Security Advisor during the attacks of 911. They
are running her because of the color of her skin. Not because she did a Goof
job as our NSA. Certainly not because of her integrity or competence because
she has neither. So how will Democrats respond? How can Democrats beat an
African American? A woman? Well thats no problem. We can do the same and as
a bonus we can run people who are competent and brilliant.

2008

-
Jordan

2/8/05

Deepthroat,
David Kay, Richard Clarke, Iran and Social Security Oh my

Greg
over at Liberal Igloo has some good stuff up. Go give this guy a bookmark.
He has good information up on a variety of topics. Well worth your time.

JOB
TRAINING CUT BY $500 MILLION: At a time when overseas outsourcing has
left many American workers ­ especially in the manufacturing sector ­ out
of work, President Bush will propose cutting
federal spending on job training by a half-billion dollars.
Federal job training programs, including dislocated-worker training, will
be cut by $200 million. Federal aid to states for job training, including
funding to train veterans, will be cut by $300 million.

FUNDING
FOR POLICE AND FIREFIGHTERS SLASHED: On 2/2/02, President Bush appeared
at the New York Police Department Command Center and said, "Police and firefighters
of New York, you have this nation's respect, and you'll
have this nation's support." Three years later Bush is
seeking to decimate
vital funding for police officers and firefighters.
The administration's budget is expected to reduce federal grants to local
police forces from $600 million to $60 million. Grants to local firefighters
would be cut by $215 million dollars.

BIG
CUTS IN BIOTERRORISM PROTECTION: On 6/12/02, President Bush told the American
people, "bioterrorism is a real threat to our country...It's important that
we confront these real threats to our country and prepare for future emergencies.
Protecting
our citizens against bioterrorism is an urgent duty of...American governments."
Now, Bush's budget will cut a "range of public health programs, including
several
to protect the nation against bioterrorist attacks and
to respond to medical emergencies." Funding for the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) would be reduced by 9 percent under Bush's plan.
Specifically, "the public health emergency fund of the [CDC], which helps
state and local agencies prepare for bioterror attacks, would be cut 12.6
percent."

Dean
will run with no opposition. It's all done but the voting. So begins a new
era of Democratic leadership.

Roemer
withdraws from DNC chair race
Tim Roemer, the only remaining opponent of Howard Dean in the race to be chairman
of the Democratic National Committee, said Monday he's bowing out of the race
-- but he offered a warning to Democrats.

Dean, the former presidential candidate and governor of Vermont, is expected
to win the DNC chairmanship at the election February 12.

Roemer, a former congressman from Indiana and a member of the September 11
commission, said Democrats must be more inclusive in their outreach to fast-growing
parts of the country.

"I got into this race five weeks ago to talk about the devastating loss
we experienced in November," Roemer said in an interview. "It was
not about 60,000 votes in Ohio. It was about losing 97 of the 100 fastest
growing counties in the country. If that's a trend in business or politics
you're in trouble."

Republicans are in the strongest position they've been in since the early
20th century, Roemer said.

Let
the work begin

-
Jordan

Take
One Down and Pass it Around - New artwork From The Free Speech ZoneTo
add the smaller version as an image (linked to www.thereisnocrisis.com) just
add this html to your page.

Bush
continues to peddle the destruction of Social Security across the nation like
some 2 bit used cars salesman. The only difference is his suit isn't tweed.
The sell is the same. The reliance on people not being educated on the subject
is the same. Same lies. Same game.

But unlike other crisis situations Bush has warned us about, people do know
something about Social Security. People were able to be fooled on Iraq because
most people didn't know much about it. It was all so far away. It was "over
there" and we were trusting the white house to know better.

Not this time. This is right here at home. Bush is trying to sell young people
on this idea of private investment accounts but the problem is todays young
people know better. We are not ignorant on this subject. Many of us already
have a ROTH IRA or 401 k or a similar account. We are already owners of private
investments. Social Security is to be the backup. The one that will always
be there. Don't let Bush take that away.

Nowhere
is the challenge facing President Bush on Social Security more apparent
than here, at an open meeting held by Senator Max Baucus on Friday, the
day after the White House road show rolled through Montana. [...]

The anxiety and confusion were palpable in the crowd, which was composed
mostly of retirees - the very group assured by Mr. Bush, again and again,
that they would not be affected. Why change the program so fundamentally,
several asked. Sylvia Stugelmeyer, a retired courthouse worker, declared:
"I'm against the privatization of Social Security. It was put into
a trust for us many years ago, and I hope to God it stays that way."

Doris Lundin, 77, asked, "How much money has the government spent from
Social Security and put in i.o.u.'s?" As the audience applauded, she
added, "And why can't they pay it back?"

Mr. Baucus provided essential support to Mr. Bush on two of his most important
domestic initiatives in his first term, the 2001 tax cut and the sweeping
overhaul of Medicare. But not this time. "You've got to call them as
you see them," Mr. Baucus says, and he seems comfortable in his opposition
to the Bush plan, even in a state that Mr. Bush carried by 20 percentage
points last fall. [...]

Mr. Baucus said his constituents were generally "very nervous"
about private investment accounts in Social Security, and retirees, who
are most likely to vote on the issue, "are quite opposed." He
added, "It's new, it's radical, and it's so different from Social Security
as they know it." [...]

But after the speech, when asked where he stood on the Bush plan, Mr. Burns
said he was still "crunching numbers" and was worried about the
deficit. Critics have asserted that the transition costs to create a system
of private accounts would significantly worsen an already serious deficit.
The headline in The Tribune on Friday, right under "Bush Sells With
Charm," said, "Montana's Lawmakers Still Aren't Convinced."

I
am going to keep this at the top through the weekend so the artwork posted
below can make the rounds. E-mail
it to everyone you know. You can download poster sized versions right below
the image. T-shirts are in the store.

I will be posting some great "Must Read Articles" though, so check
those out. They are to the right-->

Tonight,
George W. Bush provided few new details of his Social Security privatization
plan and once again failed to come clean on the three key questions that
the American people continue to ask. Bush failed to acknowledge the
extent to which benefits will be cut, debt will be increased and whether
the Republican privatization plan will increase the long-term solvency of
the program.

Diaries :: Senate Democratic Communications Center's diary ::
Bush Failed to Address Benefit Cuts: Tonight Bush said, "Your
money will grow, over time, at a greater rate than anything the current
system can deliver - and your account will provide money for retirement
over and above the check you will receive from Social Security."
[George W. Bush, State of the Union, 2/2/05]

* But, CBO Says Bush's Plan Will Cut Benefits by 45 Percent or More for
Seniors. The Bush plan will reduce benefits for all seniors, even
those who choose not to invest in privatized accounts. According to
the Congressional Budget Office, "benefits for the 1980s birth cohort
would be...30 percent lower...and benefits for the 2000s cohort would be...45
percent lower."
[CBO, "Long-term Analysis of Plan 2 of the President's Commission to
Strengthen Social Security," 7/21/2004, pp. 11 and Figure 2A]

Bush Failed to Address Increases in Debt: Tonight Bush said, "We
will make sure this plan is fiscally responsible, by starting personal retirement
accounts gradually, and raising the yearly limits on contributions over
time, eventually permitting all workers to set aside four percentage points
of their payroll taxes in their accounts."
[George W. Bush, State of the Union, 2/2/05]

* But, The President's Plan Adds Over $4.5 Trillion in Debt. "Over
the first ten years that the plan actually was in effect (2009-18), it would
add more than $1 trillion to the debt. Over the next ten years (2019-
28), it would add over $3.5 trillion more to the debt. All told, the
plan would add more than $4.5 trillion to the debt over its first 20 years."
[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "New Details Indicate
Administration Social Security Plan," 2/2/05]

Today is the day our "leader" tells us how our great country is
fairing. How we are the beacon of light shining as an example of the world.
If you ask Bush, we represent all that is good and great. If you ask any other
country we
represent the greatest threat to world peace that currently exists.
Many people, like me, have preemptively ignored his SOTU speech. We know before
he even opens his mouth that it is lies that will fall out. All
politicians lie. But it has been a long time indeed since such massive
and widespread death and destruction has been the price of such lies.

Does it suprise us that our country has become so feared? That when I hear
Bush speak of "freedom"
and "liberty" all I can think of is death and destruction?
Does it surprise anyone that we are about to be lied to yet again in another
address by the president? After all this is a man with a track record of absolute
incompetence and deceit. Time and time again he has made errors in judgment
that have cost the American people money and anguish and all too often the
lost life of a loved one.

No. I will not let this fool tell me how my country is. I know all too well
how it is. The rosy picture Bush will paint in his speech is much like the
rosy picture he painted of how the war in Iraq would go over. We
would be greeted as liberators. It was a slam
dunk. They would greet us with flowers. Or like the rosy picture he
painted for us when he "landed" that plane on that aircraft carrier
and told the nation that the mission was accomplished. Hard to say what that
mission might be since our stated goals in Iraq seem to change back and forth
with each day. Republicans have a
word for that.

Although
the reasons have changed the cost remains the same. As of today 1,438
troops have died in Iraq since the war began. Not that you would hear
much about it since the White House has made it illegal for press to cover
the coffins that return from Iraq. Not that president Bush seems to care much,
as he has attended a
total of 0 funerals of the soldiers who have died
for his war. In fact Bush
seems oblivious to the pain and suffering his ignorant foreign policy
decisions has created for countless peoples lives.

Bush's plan to Bomb the Iraqi people into peace has been riddled with mistakes
from day one. With the low estimated for civilian casualties in the tens of
thousands and the injured civilians estimates around 40,000, we must stop
and ask ourselves, is there not a better way? Can't we bring
peace to a region without first bringing death and destruction? Don't
the fools in power see that this reckless foreign policy is only making more
terrorist? Don't they see that terrorism is now at the highest
levels we have seen in 20 years? All this with no exit plan. No plan
to win the peace. They throw all this money at the problem and still go in
with very little equipment and preparation. The Administration took over 8
months to supply soldiers with sufficient body armor, and there is still a
shortage of armored Humvees. Newsweek has estimated that as many as 25% of
casualties could have been avoided if
our troops had proper equipment from the start (PDF).

All this reckless spending has created a record
deficit. But Bush won't be mentioning that in his State of the Union
speech tonight. Because then the Republicans might realize that they are supposed
to be the fiscaly responsible party. Why Republicans aren't fuming over Bush's
reckless spending is a mystery. When Bush became president the Budget surplus
stood at $127 billion. By 2003 the surplus was gone and we had a record budget
deficit of $374 Billion. The numbers are even worse today, as it climbs up
at an estimated $1.58 billion a day. Let that sink in. How many schools could
be funded with that money? How many children could be provided with health
care for that amount? How many people could we feed in Africa with that kind
of money? $1.58 a day. Of my money. Your money. Waisted. Each American citizen
is asked to pay $23,920 to fix this mess. Which would be easier if we had
jobs. During the first three years of the Bush administration 2.4 million
Americans lost their jobs. President Bush is the first President since Herbert
Hoover to have a net
loss of jobs--around 800,000--over a four-year term. More than 1.5
million private-sector jobs have been lost under President Bush, compared
to nearly 21 million private-sector jobs created under President Clinton.
Long-term
unemployment has more than doubled under Bush. The unemployment rate
has
gone up 1.4% since Bush took office.

The state of our union is far from strong. Bush likes to say we
have a strong economy. That a recent rise in jobs has cleared him
of any wrong doing in regards to his economic policies. It is a simple thing
to put
that in perspective. Americans know better. We remember better days.
And we remember who
was in charge in times when our economy was thriving.

So
tonight when Bush proclaims victory in Iraq do not be fooled. When he claims
social security is in crisis, do not be fooled. When he speaks of freedom
and liberty do not be fooled. When he tells us that things in Iraq
are just peachy do not be fooled. Remember the civilians tortured in the name
of America. Remember that even now Bush is rewarding the "few
bad apples" that made that torture possible. Remember what America
TRULY stands for.

And above all know that the Democratic party is stronger and growing stronger.
There will be a better day. Our union will become strong in time. We will
once again be respected instead of feared. Education jobs and health will
become American values. Our day will come and when it does we will create
in reality what Republicans dream of. We will some day bring the state of
our union back to greatness.

- Jordan

2/1/05

There
Is No Crisis

Once
again Bush has attempted to create a crisis where there was none. But this
time his Plan is DOA. Social
Security seems to be safe for now.

Not
a single Senate Democrat will support President Bushs proposal to
divert a portion of the Social Security payroll tax to personal investment
accounts, Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday.

If he is right, Bushs plan will be dead on arrival in the Senate,
where a supermajority of 60 votes will be needed to overcome a filibuster
by opponents. Republicans have 55 seats.

...

We want to make sure that the American people understand that were
not for benefit cuts and were not for privatization, Reid said.
Theres no crisis in Social Security.

Another
sign of a strong Democratic party.

-
Jordan

Saying
NO to torture

45
Democrats will soon vote on Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. All 45
should vote against him. This probably will not happen but it does look like
we will come close.

Up to two thirds of the 45 Democrats in the Republican-led U.S. Senate prepared
on Tuesday to oppose Alberto Gonzales as the next U.S. attorney general
because of his role in helping craft policies they blame for contributing
to the abuse of foreign detainees. [...]

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, predicted that up
to 30 of the 45 Senate Democrats would oppose Gonzales, who rose from poverty
to sit on the Texas Supreme Court before serving Bush at the White House.

The battle over Gonzales has focused largely on an Aug. 1, 2002, memo he
approved that stated only the most severe types of torture were not permissible
under U.S. and international agreements. The memo was withdrawn after a
public outcry.

Gonzales has also drawn fire for writing in January 2002 that parts of the
half-century-old Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war
were "obsolete" and "quaint."

This
is a good start. Next step is voting Dean in. This party is about to become
an effective party. It's about time.

-
Jordan

Better
Late Than Never

Somebody
go see if there are snowballs in hell. Check the sky for pigs while you are
at it.

In what may be a formal acknowledgment of the obvious, the CIA has issued
a classified report revising its prewar assessments on Iraq and concluding
that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons programs in 1991, intelligence
officials familiar with the document said.

Talk
about re-writing history... Sheesh! Too bad the damage is done.

The
report marks the first time the CIA has officially disavowed its prewar
judgments and is one in a series of updated assessments the agency is producing
as part of an effort to correct its record on Iraq's alleged weapons programs,
officials said.

Right.
Correcting the record after the fact. Reminds me of when they corrected the
exit polls to match the Bush win. Man that was good times.

The
CIA's decision to distribute the report  titled "Iraq: No Large-Scale
Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s"  in classified channels
underscores the awkwardness the agency faces as it continues to reconcile
its prewar reporting with postwar realities in Iraq. Before the war, the
CIA asserted that Iraq had stockpiled biological weapons and was reconstituting
its nuclear weapons program.

SIMPLICITY-
REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TAX BRACKETS:President Bush has added
over 10,000 pages to the federal tax code.
The American
Progress plan would make the system far simpler. The number of tax
brackets would be reduced from six to just three ­ 15 percent (for
income up to $25K), 25 percent (for income between $25K and $120K) and
39.6 percent (for income over 120K).

SIMPLICITY
- CLOSE LOOPHOLES:The plan
would close loopholes in the corporate income tax code,
including the "Bermuda" loophole that allows
U.S. firms to avoid paying taxes by moving their operations overseas.
By closing individual loopholes, the plan would also eliminate the
need for the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) ­ a special rate initially
created to ensure that the very rich pay some taxes. Without reform, the
AMT would impact 36 million Americans by 2010.

FAIRNESS
- ELIMINATE REGRESSIVE SOCIAL SECURITY TAXES: One of the most regressive
components of our tax system is the employee Social Security payroll tax.
The flat 6.2 percent tax employees pay on their first $90K of income imposes
an effective tax rate four times larger for middle-income workers
than the top 1 percent. The American
Progress plan would eliminate it. Social Security funding
would be strengthened by eliminating the cap on employer contributions
(currently there is no employer contribution for income in excess of $90K)
and devoting 2.25 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
from general revenues. The plan would not only preserve Social Security
funding but cut the program's long-term deficit in half.

FISCAL
RESPONSIBILITY - REDUCE THE DEFICIT: The federal government is on pace
to rack up another $1.4
trillion over the next ten years. The American
Progress plan is fiscally responsible, reducing the revenue shortfall
by $478 billion compared to the administration's budget. At the same time,
the American Progress plan would include a tax cut for the 70 percent
of Americans who earn up to $200,000, providing an average cut
of over $600.

OPPORTUNITY
- INCENTIVES FOR ALL AMERICANS TO SAVE: The American
Progress plan would create new opportunities for tens of millions
of Americans to save and create wealth. The current deduction system is
upside-down ­ providing a greater incentive to save if you have a higher
income (and pay a higher marginal tax rate). The plan would create
a new across-the-board 25 percent refundable tax credit for retirement savings.
This would provide the same incentives for every American ­ whether an investment
banker or a secretary ­ to save, including the 33 million Americans who
don't earn enough to have income tax liability.

(US)
­ A new study (See report at www.USCountVotes.org)
was released today co-authored by prominent statisticians and vote-analysis
experts from a diverse range of Universities including Notre Dame, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, Cornell, and Temple. Their study strongly refutes the ‘explanation’
by pollster Edison/Mitofsky (E/M) that their exit polls (Kerry winning by
3%) differed so widely from the final certified tally (Bush by 2.5%) due to
Kerry voters’ answering pollsters questions at a higher rate than Bush voters.
The US Count Votes report “debunks” this hypothesis and adds to the mounting
evidence that the answer to the exit poll mystery lies in the vote counting,
not the accuracy of the exit polls.

“The new Edison/Mitofsky report fails to provide any evidence to substantiate
the hypothesis that Kerry voters participated in exit polls at a higher rate
than Bush voters, or that exit polling errors caused exit polls to favor Kerry
by 3% when Bush won the election by 2.5%,” said Kathy Dopp, President, US
Count Votes. “The possibility that the overall vote count was substantially
corrupted must be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly."

Among
the revelations uncovered in the study was that the response to exit pollsters
was actually higher in precincts that strongly favored Bush than in those
that strongly favored Kerry. This contradicts the E/M hypothesis that Kerry
voters’ tended to cooperate more, and suggests that if anything, the exit
polls may have been skewed towards President Bush, not Senator Kerry.

“The
report’s findings add one more study to a growing list that indicate our democracy
was compromised on November 2nd by an assortment of un-democratic tactics,”
said Susan Truitt, President and Chief Counsel, CASE America. “Putting faith
in partisan corporations to correctly count our vote ‘with secret proprietary
software’ was a catastrophic mistake. We should be spending less time worrying
about bringing democracy to Iraq and more time working to ensure we practice
it here at home.”

CASE
America (The Citizens’ Alliance for Secure Elections) is a non-partisan, pro-democracy
organization that is partnering with The National Ballot Integrity Project
to ensure elections are free, fair, accountable, and accurately reflect the
intentions of the voters. The group plans to achieve these goals through research,
information and education, grassroots organizational and leadership development,
and support and pursuit of various legal and legislative initiatives.

Problems
found in nearly every post election investigation, all of which favored the
re-election of the President, include: voting machine shortages; ballots counted
in secret; lost, discarded, and improperly rejected registration forms and
absentee ballots; touch-screen machines that registered “Bush” when voters
pressed “Kerry”; precincts in which turnout was suspiciously high, including
many which had more votes recorded than registered voters; precincts in which
the reported turnout was suspiciously low; and high rates of “spoiled” ballots
and under-votes in which no choice for president was recorded.

-
Jordan

The
real State of the Union

Soon Bush will tell us all what the current state of the union is. Of course
he won't tell the people what it really is, rather he will paint us another
rosy picture of just how wonderful things are under his joyous rule. For those
of us who live in the reality based community or for those of us who take
the time to open our eyes and look out a window, this pretty picture Bush
paints is just another lie and a mountain of lies and deceit. For those of
us with eyes open we see a country losing jobs. A deficit out of control.
We see wars sold to us with lies. We see problems with underfunded education
and health care. We see our 'leaders' starting a new war when the old is unfinished.
We see our rights being taken away. We see a government paying 'journalists'
to sell us more lies. We see all this and we know before Bush even opens his
mouth that when he gives his State of the Union address, that we will be lied
to.

Is
it too much for me to wish that our countries leaders stop making a complete
fool of themselves? Do I ask too much?

Dick
Cheney, Dressing Down
Parka, Ski Cap at Odds With Solemnity of Auschwitz Ceremony
Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing
an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his
name. It reminded one of the way in which children's clothes are inscribed
with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice
president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.

-
Jordan

Another
Shill gets busted

One
wonders, if this many shills are getting caught, just how many are there out
there that have escaped detection? That is why this
is so important.

And three
makes a trend.
One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring
commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after
the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal
payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that
Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, "Ethics
& Religion," appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor
by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved
marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without
disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.

THE
TASK AT HAND:According to the "vast
majority of international scientists and peer-reviewed reports,"
climate change is a "serious growing threat." Unless concrete steps
are taken to mitigate the problem, "no country will be immune from the extreme
weather events and rising sea levels that scientists predict will occur."
The Task Force recommends 10 concrete but practical steps
aimed at ensuring that global warming does not exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6
degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. If global warming exceeds
that point, "the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly."
The recommendations of the Task Force include: taking greater advantage
of existing low and zero-carbon technologies, creating a global emissions
trading market and, for G8 countries, producing 25 percent of energy
from renewable sources by 2025.

KILLING
TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE: Efforts to reduce global warming go hand
in hand with enhancing oil security. Low and zero-carbon energy sources, including
many biofuels, are renewable and can be produced domestically ­ reducing our
dependence on foreign oil. (Brazil, for example, already derives one-third
of its transport fuel from ethanol produced from sugar cane.) The
Task Force recommends that the United States and other major industrialized
nations "divert
their agricultural subsidies to biofuels instead of food crops."

BIG
OIL TARGETS BRITAIN: While Blair is courageously leading an effort to
bring the world together, big U.S.
oil companies are bankrolling an effort to bring him down.
The Guardian reports, "lobby groups funded by the US oil industry
are targeting Britain in a bid to play down the threat of climate change
and derail action to cut greenhouse gas emissions." Specifically, ExxonMobil
is funneling tens of thousands of dollars to industry front groups operating
in Britain that produce reports that claim to "undermine" growing scientific
consensus about climate change.

Serious new election tampering allegations have emerged from an Ohio county,
where witnesses allege that stickers were placed on presidential election
ballots, RAW STORY has learned.

Several volunteer workers in the Ohio recount in Clermont County, Ohio have
prepared affidavits alleging serious tampering, violations of state and
federal law and possible fraud. They name the Republican chief of Clermonts
Board of Elections Daniel Bare and the head of the Clermont Democratic Party
Priscilla ODonnell as complicit in these acts.

These volunteers, observing the recount on behalf of the Greens, Libertarians
and Democrats, assert that during the Dec. 14, 2004 hand recount they noticed
stickers covering the Kerry/Edwards oval, whereas the Bush/Cheney oval seemed
to be colored in.

Some witnesses state that beneath the stickers, the Kerry/Edwards oval was
selected. The opti-scan ballots were then fed into the machines after the
hand recount.

Allegations of ballot tampering in Ohio  which decided the outcome
of the presidential election by some 100,000 votes  find particular
resonance in Clermont, one of three Ohio counties which saw the biggest
increases in votes for Bush from 2000 to 2004. The other counties were Butler
and Warren; Warren County had a lockdown after an alleged terror threat
that the FBI later denied.

These counties increased their support of Bush by only a few percentage
points each, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported Monday. But in
the raw numbers of votes, they made the difference.

Unless
we can get Election Reform in the next few years, Dems might as well kiss
'06 and '08 goodbye. Democrats need to wake up to the simple fact that Rethugs
cheat on these elections. If we go into the fight thinking they are playing
fair, we have already lost. Seriously, these are the same people who started
an entire war based on lies and for a profit. Election tampering is like a
walk in the park for these guys.

-
Jordan

1/26/05

Symour
Hersh on the ball

Great
speech by Mr. Hersh. he was very informative on the Daily Show last night.
I love the way this guy thinks. I love that he has the balls to say what most
of us are thinking and he usually says it with cameras rolling. More of that
please. Here is a transcript
of the speech and here
is a good posts on the speech.

The
amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine
neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why
and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians
and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome
the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease.
It does say something about how fragile our Democracy is. You do have to
wonder what a Democracy is when it comes down to a few men in the Pentagon
and a few men in the White House having their way.

And,
so
does Ivins...I would love to see them have a debate and watch
Ivins bring W. to tears. Here's her take:

"He's delusional: He cannot possibly believe his tax cuts
are making this country more just and equal ­ they are making it more
unjust and unequal every day, not to mention getting us ever deeper
into debt. One does not provide "freedom from want and fear" by privatizing
Social Security. We've been there, we've done this ­ we tried unregulated
capitalism at the end of the 19th century, and it was awful.

On
the heels of the Armstrong
Williams scandal, the contractual obligations of another
commentator cheerleaderhave been exposed. In 2002,
syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher staunchly defended the Bush
marriage initiative in any venue that would give her space without
disclosing that she was under a $20,000-plus contract with the Department
of Health and Human Services to promote the proposal. She "received
an additional $20,000 from the Bush Administration" for authoring a report,
"titled 'Can Government Strengthen Marriage?', for a private organization."
In one of her columns, Gallagher goes on to plug this same policy brief and
encourages
HHS to implement it, of course, without mentioning her financial
connection. After the Armstrong Williams debacle, White House Press Secretary
Scott McClellan rebuffed questions about whether there were additional commentators
on the government dole, saying, "I'm
not aware of any others that are under contract.

A
Marine transport helicopter crashed during sandstorms in Iraq's western
desert Wednesday, killing 31 troops, while insurgents killed five other
American military personnel in the deadliest day for U.S. forces since the
Iraq war began.

Militants waging a campaign to derail Sunday's election carried out
at least six car bombings and a flurry of other attacks on schools to be
used as polling stations, political party offices and Kurdish sites, killing
or wounding more than two dozen people.

While al-Qaida warned Iraqis to stay away from the polls  saying they
would only have themselves to blame if they are hurt in attacks  President
Bush called on people to "defy the terrorists" and cast ballots
in the crucial election.

- snip -

Bush
expressed his condolences for the deaths. "The story today is going
to be very discouraging to the American people. I understand that. It is
the long-term objective that is vital  that is to spread freedom,"
he told reporters. He said "a lot of Iraqis" were expected to
participate in the elections. "Clearly, there are some who are intimidated,"
Bush said. "I urge people to vote. I urge people to defy these terrorists."

Way to stand up for what is right! Of course Gonzales will be voted in any
way because the Rethugs both have the votes and lack the morals to do so.
But this was a good start. Democrats need to stop being pushed over and start
standing up for what they know to be right.

Attorney
General nominee Alberto Gonzales is the wrong man to be the nation's top
law enforcement official given his participation in crafting Bush administration
policies during the war on terror, Democrats said Wednesday.

But Republicans still have enough votes to push President Bush's former
White House counsel through the Senate Judiciary Committee and on to the
full Senate for confirmation. The committee met as President Bush urged
lawmakers Wednesday to ``promptly act and confirm Judge Al Gonzales. He'll
be a great attorney general.''

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., called Gonzales on Tuesday to tell him that he
would voting against him.

- snip -

``His judgment is defective,'' added Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.
Democrats complain that Gonzales was evasive with his answers to their questions
about White House policies in the war on terror. They have used his nomination
and that of secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice to criticize the
Iraq war and the treatment of foreign prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

``The continuing effort to pin the blame for the torture scandal on a
few bad apples among our soldiers while ignoring or even rewarding Mr.
Gonzales and others responsible for the policy has sent the wrong message
to our nation and the world,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. ``I cannot
support a nominee who has done so much to harm America's basic interests
and fundamental values.'' [Emphasis mine]

The
enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake, America remains
engaged in the world, by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power
that favors freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will
show purpose without arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with
resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that
gave our nation birth.

I
am going to borrow words from alysheba
over at Kos. Because I agree with everything that alysheba
said and now I don't have to type it. Hey, its late. I'm tired....

I
just heard California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a woman who allegedly represents
me, a California Democrat, use the most ridiculous logic I've ever heard
on the Senate floor:

"I never expected this President to appoint anyone who disagreed with
him. The question here is whether or not Condoleeza Rice is competent enough
to do the job of Secretary of State".

How could anyone whose involvement with the Iraqi quagmire occurred at the
level of National Security Advisor possibly be deemed "competent"
by anyone? How could anyone who refused to allow Richard Clarke one-on-one
meetings with the President - only to turn to him and say "You're in
charge, Dick," when the shit hit the fan - possibly be deemed competent?
How could anyone who was giving a speech on the dire need for a national
missile defense system on the morning of September 10th, 2001, possibly
be deemed competent?

BUSH'S
AGGRESSIVE ANTI-WOMAN AGENDA: Bush's opposition to abortion is more than
just talk. The National Right to Life Committee heralded the 2003-2004
Congress as "the
most successful ever for the pro-life movement."
With the help of his right-wing allies in Congress, Bush signed a number of
laws which erode women's rights in the United States. The new laws criminalize
certain abortion procedures, define a fetus at any stage of development
as a person, and make it harder for women to obtain abortions at
publicly funded hospitals. Out of over 200 judges nominated to the federal
bench by Bush, only
two have expressed any respect for abortion rights.

PUTTING
WOMEN'S HEALTH AT RISK: Criminalizing abortion won't end abortion ­ it
will just put women's health at risk. In 1930, "almost 2,700
women died from illegal abortions ­ and that's just the
number who had abortion recorded as their official cause of death."
In 1962, "almost 1,600 women were treated for incomplete illegal abortions
in at Harlem Hospital." Forty-three percent of all abortions worldwide
are performed in countries where abortion is illegal. According to
the World Health Organization, "80,000
women around the world still die each year of complications
from illegal abortion." Maybe that's why Laura
Bush opposes overturning Roe v. Wade.

Remember when the Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility? Those
were the days. Then Clinton came and actually
did what the Republicans had been saying they were going to do. Boy
that pissed 'em off good. Well Republicans should all be just as pissed off
as the Dems on the issue of reckless spending. After all it is our children
and their children who will pay for this mess. I
can just imagine how these kids must feel about this burden.

Well today Bush asked for another 80 Billion (thats Billion with a "B")
to spend on his war-based-on-lies-and-deceit. Add to this debt the money it
will take for Bush's plan to "fix" Social
Security
and we are in some serious trouble.

As Congress started to digest a new Bush administration request of $80 billion
to bankroll wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its top budget analyst on Tuesday
projected $855 billion in deficits for the next decade even without the
costs of war and President Bush's Social Security plan.

- snip -

Amid the White House's preparations, the Congressional Budget Office predicted
the government will accumulate another $855 billion in deficits over the
next decade.

The projection, for the years 2006 through 2015, is almost two-thirds smaller
than what congressional budget analysts predicted last fall. But the drop
is due largely to quirks in budget estimates that required the agency to
exclude future Iraq and Afghanistan war costs and other expenses. Last September,
the 10-year deficit estimate was $2.3 trillion.

I
fully Democratic expect Senators to act, well, like Democratic Senators. Re-insert
your spines and do the right thing. It wont hurt.

This
is a start:

MSNBC
- Democrats blast Iraq policy in Rice debate
Kennedy, of Massachusetts, keyed the Democratic attack with charges that
Rice, as Bushs national security adviser, provided Congress with false
reasons for going to war. Had she not, he said in a speech, it
might have changed the course of history.

Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., following up, accused the Bush administration
of lying and said he was voting against Rices confirmation as a way
of trying to stop mistruths.

And Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., charged she concealed the Central Intelligence
Agencys skepticism that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium for a nuclear
weapons program from Africa.

Rice claimed there was a consensus within the administration
on on Iraqs activity when the Department of Energy and the State Department
had reservations. She exaggerated and distorted the facts, Levin
said.

We
are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty
in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.
The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the
world.

Great
Diary over at Kos on the very real problem we face with global warming.
Go check it out.

Global
warming is approaching the critical point of no return, after which widespread
drought, crop failure and rising sea-levels would be irreversible, an international
climate change task force warned Monday.

Saw
this
via The Left Coaster.
It looks like bad news for BushCo who seem to be itching to attack Iran. The
new Zogby poll shows very little support for a war in Iran. I guess the American
people can only stomach
so much.

The
poll, conducted before U.K. media revealed that the British government was
arguing strenuously against military action in Iran, finds 76% of likely
voters believe the U.S. should let Iran determine its own future and are
opposed to the U.S. trying to bring about regime change in the Islamic state.
Nearly seven-in-ten (68%) respondents favored using some form of diplomacy
to resolve U.S. concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapons program49%
favor multi-party diplomatic talks while another one-in-five (19%) respondents
favor direct diplomatic talks between the U.S. and Iran.

In
a related story The Left Coaster also notes that the Zogby poll also finds
this interesting tid bit

The
poll finds a higher percentage of Americans saying that they are ashamed
that Mr. Bush is their president; three-in-ten (31%) Americans now hold
that view, as compared to one-in-four (26%) a month ago.

President
Bush's inaugural address placing the fostering of democratic freedoms around
the world at the center of U.S. foreign policy drew a skeptical reaction
Friday in the Arab world, where analysts questioned whether the rhetoric
of the speech was consistent with the administration's actions in the Middle
East.

With Arab countries mostly shuttered for a four-day Islamic holiday that
marks the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, there was little public
reaction to Bush's address. Many newspapers have not published for days,
and government offices closed earlier than usual this week.

In interviews, however, a number of political analysts and commentators
commended the values outlined in Bush's speech, in which he proclaimed that
the United States "will persistently clarify the choice before every
ruler and every nation, the moral choice between oppression, which is always
wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right." But they said the words
belied the fact that the United States supports several authoritarian governments
in the Middle East and would ring hollow to the many Arabs who perceive
U.S. policy in the oil-rich region as motivated by financial concerns and
support for Israel.

With the second term off to a rough start and the approval
numbers for Bush dropping the bad news for the white house just keeps
rolling in. If troops in Iraq come back feeling the way Sean Huze and countless
other veterans of teh Iraq war feel, the republicans may find strong opposition
froma group of people that are hard to discredit. Because once you have seen
war, you tend to come back a Democrat.

Sean Huze enlisted in the Marine Corps right after the Sept. 11 attacks
and was, in his own words, "red, white and blue all the way" when
he deployed to Iraq 16 months later. Unquestioning in his support of the
invasion, he grew irritated when his father, a former National Guardsman,
expressed doubts about the war.

Today, all that has changed. Haunted by the civilian casualties he witnessed,
Corporal Huze has become one of a small but increasing number of Iraq veterans
who have formed or joined groups to oppose the war or to criticize the way
it is being fought.

The two most visible organizations - Operation Truth, of which Corporal
Huze is a member, and Iraq Veterans Against the War - were founded only
last summer but are growing in membership and sophistication. The Internet
has helped them spread their word and galvanize like-minded people in ways
unimaginable to activist veterans of previous generations, who are also
lending help.

"There's strength in numbers," Corporal Huze said. "By ourselves,
we're lone voices, a whisper in a swarm of propaganda out there. Combined,
we can become a roar and have an impact on the issues that we care about."

Each
person who returns from Iraq is effected. As they explain to their families
and loved ones exactly what is going on over there and how little planning
and preparation there was, the number of people in the anti-war movement grows.

- Jordan

Spies
like us

Since
the troublesome CIA often wanted to do the right thing instead of blindly
do what the white house said, Rummmy has decided to create his own clandestine
spy agency. One that reports to him, not the congress. I guess the CIA purge
wasn't enough...

The unit, called the Strategic Support Branch, has also been in operation
in other places sources would not disclose, the Washington Post said, citing
documents and interviews with participants.

A early planning memorandum to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, said the focus
of the initiative was on "emerging target countries such as Somalia,
Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia," according to the Post.

The secret spying organization is designed to provide Rumsfeld with tools
to conduct so-called human intelligence tasks, such as interrogation of
prisoners and recruitment of foreign spies.

MUNICH - United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cancelled
a planned visit to Munich.

Rumsfeld has informed the German government via the US embassy he will not
take part at the Munich Security Conference in February, conference head
Horst Teltschik said.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed a complaint in
December with the Federal German Prosecutor's Office against Rumsfeld accusing
him of war crimes and torture in connection with detainee abuses at Iraq's
Abu Ghraib prison.

Rumsfeld had made it known immediately after the complaint was filed that
he would not attend the Munich conference unless Germany quashed the legal
action.

This
administration may find the world much less friendly to travels when all is
said and done. Keep looking for nes online. Because you sure as hell won't
see a story like this in the Main Stream news.

-
Jordan

1/21/05

Collages
of War #5

Inauguration
Special Edition

"We
have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel
its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed
fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."

Attacks
Kill at Least 21 at Iraq Wedding
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque packed with worshippers
celebrating a major Muslim holiday Friday, and a suicide driver blew up an
ambulance at the wedding of a Shiite couple south of the capital. At least
21 people died and dozens were wounded  including the bride and groom.

FCC
chairman Powell to step down
WASHINGTON  Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell
plans to resign today, ending whats often been a controversial tenure
as he tried to push the telecom and media industries into an increasingly
deregulated world that some lawmakers, companies and consumer groups didnt
like.

First
Signs of Civil War in Iraq?Two Car Bombs Target Iraqi Shiites
Mosque Attack Kills 15, Explosive-Packed Ambulance Leaves 7 Wedding Guests
Dead. A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite Muslim mosque and a suicide bomber
blew up an explosive-packed ambulance at a Shiite wedding party, killing at
least 22 people Friday as worshipers celebrated one of the year's most important
Muslim holidays.

An
Inauguration Free From Specifics
The Progress Report. Posted January 21, 2005.
While liberally dosing the crowd with 'freedom' and 'liberty,' Bush's speech
remarkably did not mention Iraq, the war, terrorism or al Qaeda.

"I
am going back to defend the Iraqi people; to defend the old women of Iraq;
the old men of Iraq; the land of Iraq. Do you allow someone to enter your
home and force you out of it? They have put up the American flag in Umm Qasr,
this is not liberation, this is occupation."

Bush will serve another
gruesome four years as the Commander in Chief of our great nation. He does
so with one of the lowest
approval rates of a second term president. He does so having lead
our country to war preemptively against an unarmed country that had no capability
to harm us, killing over a thousand
Americans in the process. On top of this he
opted against serving in war when his country called. He does so after
presiding over one of the worst attacks on American soil in our history. He
does so after letting Osama Bin Laden escape. He does so having turned a record
deficit into an unbelievably
irresponsible National Debt. When President Bush took office, we were
on track for a 10-year surplus of over $5 trillion. Now, because of his policies,
were headed toward a 10-year deficit of over $3 trillion. He does so
with one of the worst economic
records in history. He does so having made unprecedented cuts to education
and the arts.

His plans for the future seem to be more of the same. More americans dead.
More cuts to valuable social programs, more economic strife for the middle
class, more reckless spending. Undoubtedly more wars.

So what is next? Will
he set his sights on Iran? Syria? North Korea? Will he actually have
a war plan and exit strategy this time? Has he learned from his many mistakes?
Is he even aware that he has made any mistakes? Will he use the tactics of
fear and misinformation to create a false crisis with Social
Security, like he created a false crisis in Iraq? Will the lies
end? Will he be honest with the people he serves? Will he ever be held accountable?

(Remember
I post just a tiny portion of what Zack has in his roundup. Be sure to read
the entire thing)

STILL
NO PLAN:Refusing "to set any
timetable for the withdrawal of American troops,"
Rice made it painfully clear that the Bush administration has no long term
strategy for Iraq. Citing concern among Iraqi and American officials that
the U.S. plans to cut and run in Iraq, Sen. Biden (D-DE) asked Rice
if there was any "reasonable possibility that the United States would withdraw
the bulk of its forces before the end of 2005." Rice replied, "I
can't judge that," adding lamely, "I will say that we're
going to try to help the Iraqis get this done." As Slate's Fred Kaplan pointed
out, "This wasn't even a 'non-denial denial.' It wasn't a denial. [Rice]
declined to assure the Iraqis or anyone else that the United States is firmly
committed…The question that Biden said everyone is asking in Iraq—are
we staying, or are we plotting to cut and run?—remains,
remarkably, unanswered."

"Well
there's a lot of talk of making peace
But I have to admit I don't understand
How we expect anyone to believe
When we're standing at the door with a gun in our hand"

Taken
From Chorus of New Song:
"Let Peace On Earth Finally Come"
by Ian Rhett (c) 2004

1.
Set-up: What did the media say about manly-man President Bush wasting money
by riding around in a fighter jet? Punch line: Nothing! The media are a
bunch of cowardly lightweights who are afraid to challenge this administration.

2. Whats the difference between George H. W. Bush and George
W. Bush? Im not sure, but have you seen my oil wells???

3. Whats the difference between George H. W. Bush and George
W. Bush? Quite a bit, I suppose. I don't really want to get into it, right
now. Sigh.

4. Hey, have you seen my forest? I think somebody just cut it down.
The whole thing. It was there yesterday and now it's gone. Strange. I suppose
there won't be any forest fires, at least.

Only
two Senators had the balls to not vote for Condi, who lied over and over again
to the american people. All the other Senators decided that honesty must not
be needed in the position of Secretary of State.

Guess
who the two were that did the right thing?

Senator
Boxer and Senator Kerry

-
Jordan

When
will we learn

Yesterday an amazing thing happened. The main stream media was covering, over
and over again, Rice defending herself against her lies. All day and all night
on these news stations we see the message of the Right crammed down our collective
throats. Non stop. We hear of people on our side, good, if not a bit misguided,
Democrats talking about how we need to go to the middle so our message is
heard. This is so wrong. Nothing could be more further from the truth. Yesterday
was a great example. All evening I watched as Rice's testimony before the
senators was played on the news. Rice backtracking, defending herself, looking
the fool, all because Boxer had the cajones to say it like it is.

There were many other Senators who spoke. Many of them were very kind and
apologetic. Thanking Rice for her service and kissing her ass as best they
could in order to gather a few scraps of good favor from the Bush cabinet.
But were those the clips that played on TV? NO. Were those polite ass-kissing
sessions the front cover story in my paper today? NO. It was Boxer slamming
the gauntlet down on rice that got the media
into a frenzy.

Sen.
Barbara Boxer: I just feel you quote President Bush when it suits you,
but you contradicted him when he said, "Yes, Saddam could have a nuclear
weapon in less than a year." You go on television nine months later
and said, "Nobody ever said it was. ..." Condoleezza Rice, nominated
as secretary of state: Senator, that was just a question of pointing out
to people that there was an uncertainty. No one was saying that he would
have to have a weapon within a year for it to be worth it to go to war.

Sen. Barbara Boxer: Well, if you can't admit to this mistake, I hope
that you'll. ...

Rice: Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would
like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity.
Thank you very much.

Sen. Barbara Boxer: I'm not. I'm just quoting what you said. You
contradicted the president, and you contradicted yourself.

Rice: Senator, I'm happy to continue the discussion, but I really
hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly.

You
see the media loves a good story. Senator after Senator crawling up into the
confines of the rear end of a member of Bush's cabinet is not a juicy story.
Boxer handing Rice her own ass with a side of mash potatoes, now that is a
good story.

You see Democrats? We can own our party, we can own our issues, we can be
ourselves and stop whimpering in the middle and it wont hurt us. It will HELP
us. The sooner we learn this the better. Say what we feel. Be controversial.
Throw the lies of the Bush administration back in their faces and watch as
the media jumps on it and gives it airplay. John stewart will bring it home
for us.

So if we play our card right we can indeed get media attention, while at the
same time getting our message out. This is all thanks to Senator Boxer. Now
go show her some love.

You
may be sitting there and asking yourself "why does Senator Boxer kick
so much ass?" Is it because she was one of the few Senators to vote AGAINST
the war? Is it because she was the ONLY Senator to object to the vote in Ohio?
Yes, it is both of those things, but it is also the tough questions she put
to Condi Rice during her confirmation hearings today. Let
me give you a little sample of the can-o-asswhup she opened up on
Rice this afternoon:

(Edited
for length)

"Now,
it took you to page three of your testimony to mention the word "Iraq."
[...] Perhaps you agree with President Bush, who said all that's been resolved.
I'm quoting today's Post: "Bush said in an interview last week with
the Washington Post that the '04 election was a moment of accountability
for the decisions he made in Iraq." But today's Washington Post/ABC
poll found that 58 percent disapprove of his handling of the situation,
to 40 percent who approve -- and only 44 percent said the war was worth
fighting.

[...] you never even mention indirectly the 1,366 American troops that have
died, or the 10,372 who have been wounded. [...] And 25 percent of those
dead are from my home state. And this from a war that was based on what
everyone now says, including your own administration, were falsehoods about
WMDs, weapons of mass destruction. And I've had tens of thousands of people
from all over the country say that they disagree that this administration
and the people in it shouldn't be held accountable. [...]

... Now, since 9/11 we've been engaged in a just fight against terror. And
I, like Senator Feingold and everyone here who was in the Senate at the
time, voted to go after Osama bin Laden and to go after the Taliban, and
to defeat al Qaeda. And you say they have left territory -- that's not true.
Your own documents show that al Qaeda has expanded from 45 countries in
'01 to more than 60 countries today.

Well, with you in the lead role, Dr. Rice, we went into Iraq. I want to
read you a paragraph that best expresses my views [...] It was written by
one of the world's experts on terrorism, Peter Bergen, five months ago.
He wrote: "What we have done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have
hoped for in his wildest dreams: We invaded an oil-rich Muslim nation in
the heart of the Middle East, the very type of imperial adventure bin Laden
has long predicted was the U.S.'s long-term goal in the region. We deposed
the secular socialist Saddam, whom bin Laden has long despised, ignited
Sunni and Shi'a fundamentalist fervor in Iraq, and have now provoked a defensive
jihad that has galvanized jihad- minded Muslims around the world. It's hard
to imagine a set of policies better designed to sabotage the war on terror."
[...]

And this was not the case in '01. And I have great proof of it, including
a State Department document that lists every country in which al Qaeda operated
prior to 9/11. And you can see the countries; no mention of Iraq. And this
booklet was signed off on by the president of the United States, George
W. Bush. It was put out by George Bush's State Department, and he signed
it. There was no al Qaeda activity there -- no cells.

Now, the war was sold to the American people, as Chief of Staff to President
Bush Andy Card said, like a "new product." Those were his words.
Remember, he said, "You don't roll out a new product in the summer."
Now, you rolled out the idea and then you had to convince the people, as
you made your case with the president."

"First
step," Bush told TIME last month, "is to make sure everybody understands
we have a problem." The President last week surrounded himself with
citizens ranging from children to an 80-year-old and warned that the Social
Security system will be "flat bust, bankrupt" by the time
workers in their 20s retire. . . At another appearance. . . Bush went
off script to warn a group of teenagers, "The system will be bankrupt
by the year 2040."

That sounds pretty scary--except that it's not true. What will actually
happen in 2018, according to the Social
Security trustees who oversee the program, is that the money paid
out in benefits will begin to exceed the amount collected in taxes. And
since Social
Security will run a surplus until then (and has been running one
for some time), it has billions available that it can tap to fill the gap.
Even under conservative estimates, the system as it stands will have enough
money to pay all its promised benefits until 2042 and most of its obligations
for decades after.

What's more, even if you take the President at his word--that a crisis and
bankruptcy are fast approaching--the introduction of private accounts does
nothing to slow that process. On the contrary, it makes things worse, by
diverting payroll taxes from current retiree benefits and bringing the end
of surpluses that much closer.

President
Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his
approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration
officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or
managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections,"
Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people
listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq,
and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

Greg
over at the Liberal
Igloo has some great information on this scary subject.

"I've
Warned Of War Before, And I'm Not Alone
In an entry a few weeks back I wrote about how liberals must be very vigilant
in the next few months, because it's clear that The Bush Corporation is
starting to plan for an attack on Iran, and they've started to publicly
put the heat on them as of late."

1.
George W. Bush and a nun were riding together, in an airplane. The nun
looked over at Bush and just shook her head in utter disdain and embarrassment.
George W. Bush didnt notice. He was busy eating a pretzel.

2. Setup: How many young George W. Bushes does it take to change
a light bulb? Punch line: That depends. Are any of them drunk or stoned,
at the time? In that case, it would take more George W. Bushes, because
their already-limited coordination would be diminished by artificial substances.
In the rare case that they were neither stoned, nor drunk, it wouldnt
take as many George Bushes. Probably more than one, though. I really cant
give you an exact answer.

3.
I think I just found George W. Bush. He was listening in on my private phone
call, trying to win the war on terror. He accidentally started coughing
and I was like, Mr. President? Is that you? And he was like,
No. But the accent was very Texan. I would say Im 98-percent
sure that it was him. When I caught him, I wasnt sure what to do,
next. I didnt want to keep talking to my friend, knowing that the
president was just sitting there, listening. It was just very, very
awkward. So I hung up. Im thinking about changing my phone number.

Over
the objections
of Vice President Cheney, Americans will celebrate the life of Martin Luther
King Jr. on Monday. King will be honored for many things, as "prime
mover of the Montgomery bus boycott, keynote speaker at the
March on Washington, [and America's] youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate."
But it is important to recognize all the progressive challenges King laid
out for America. Providing an inspiring example of how faith can be translated
into the public realm, Dr. King used his pulpit to confront ­ besides
racial inequality ­ poverty, war, civil liberties, hunger and global justice,
among other things. "God
has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here,"
King said, "and his children who can't eat three square meals a day…This is
what we have to do." King challenged Americans to surmount the "apathy of
conformist thought," and stand up for a series of specific and connected progressive
causes.

ECONOMIC
JUSTICE: In the months immediately preceding his death on April 4, 1968,
King turned his attention almost exclusively to the problem of poverty.
He called
for a guaranteed family income, threatened
national boycotts, and spoke of disrupting entire cities by nonviolent "camp-ins."
King was interested in more than charity; he wanted to effect structural changes
that would guarantee a better chance for America's poor. "True compassion
is more than flinging a coin to a beggar," he said, "it
comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
Thirty-seven years after King's death, the "edifice" still needs work. In
the last four years, our supposedly "compassionate" president has rammed through
three separate tax cuts for the wealthy, greatly increasing
the burden on low- and middle-income Americans. The result? Under
President Bush, poverty
rates have risen for three straight years and the number of
people without health insurance has grown to 45 million.

A
CARING COMMUNITY: King worked to create an America where inequality
­ whether racial or economic ­ was seen as a moral issue. "Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," King said. "Whatever
affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
The Bush administration's position? Portray the poor as mentally unsound:
"I do not believe being poor is a condition," said Housing Secretary Alphonso
Jackson, "it
is a state of mind. Perhaps it is with this theory in mind
that President Bush has failed to support programs benefiting America's
least fortunate, like Section
8 housing and Medicaid.
In addition, his administration has undermined programs designed to improve
economic development in low-income areas, like the Community
Reinvestment Act, and today announced it would "drastically
shrink" the Department of Housing's $8 billion community branch.

GLOBAL
JUSTICE:King was outspoken on the issue of global justice.
He was worried about those with great wealth but little conscience, who invested
huge sums of money in the world's poor nations "only to take the profits out
with no concern for the social betterment of the countries." It's
good thing King didn't get a look at Halliburton, the vice president's
former company, now being
investigated for bribing, overcharging and defrauding
foreign governments from which it has hauled in huge profits. Today,
the U.S. has made it easier for multinational companies to profit with "no
concern for the social betterment" of their own country either, reducing corporate taxes
and refusing to close the so-called "Bermuda
loophole" that allows companies to move their offices offshore
to avoid U.S. taxes.

FOREIGN
POLICY:King vehemently opposed the Vietnam War, not
just because he was against violence, but because he saw how the war could
undermine America's credibility abroad. King could have been speaking of the
quandary in Iraq when he warned, "The judgment of God is upon us today...We
have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically
isolated in the world." Polls show that since the Iraq invasion, America's
reputation
has plummeted worldwide. According to the report
by the DefenseScience Board published in November,
the Bush administration's disdain for international bodies and treaties, its
unilateralism and failure
to communicate with other nations, has left America, precisely
as King predicted it would, "morally and politically isolated in the world."

American Army soldiers are deserting and fleeing to Canada rather
than fight in Iraq, rekindling memories of the thousands of draft-dodgers
who flooded north to avoid service in Vietnam.

An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq,
reflecting Washington's growing problems with troop morale [...]

The Pentagon says that the level of desertion is no higher than usual and
denies that it is having difficulty persuading troops to fight. The flight
to Canada is, however, an embarrassment for the military, which is suffering
from a recruiting shortfall for the National Guard and the Army Reserves.

The deaths of 18 American soldiers in a suicide bomb attack in Mosul, northern
Iraq, last month, was a further blow to morale. Soon after, the number of
American soldiers killed since President Bush declared that large-scale
combat operations were at an end passed the 1,000 mark.

Lt Col Joe Richard, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the US government wanted
the deserters to be returned from Canada. "If you don't want to fight,
don't join," he said.
"The men in Canada have an obligation to fulfil their military contracts
and do their duty. If and when they return to this country, they will be
prosecuted."

So with the recent
news that the search for WMD's is over and there werent any, I am reminded
of the things the key players said leading up to the war. Billimon
has compiled an amazing list of these lies. Heres a sample:

Simply stated,
there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
- Dick Cheney, Vice President
Speech to VFW National Convention
8/26/2002

Right now,
Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production
of biological weapons.
- George W. Bush, President
Speech to UN General Assembly
9/12/2002

Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the
facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell
us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use
chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have
- George W. Bush, President
Radio Address
10/5/2002

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction,
is determined to make more.
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State
Remarks to UN Security Council
2/5/2003

Wouldn't it be cool if it was Democrats who had said these things. Because
then they would have to pay a price for lying to their country to start a
war, killing tens of thousand of people, all based on lies. That would kick
ass.

Oh, and now that
we know that we attacked Iraq without any justification whatsoever, this quote
from Bill O'Reilly comes to mind:

"I
said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein
and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will
not trust the Bush administration again."

- Bill O'Reilly, on ABC's Good Morning America, 03-18-03

Time to get Bill
to put down the falafel and apologize to the nation.

- Jordan

Time
for round 2 of jokes

1. Why
did George W. Bush cross the road? You guessed it! To attack a sovereign
nation!

2. Why did George W. Bush cross the road? Thats right! To give
some more money and tax cuts to rich people!

3. Why did George W. Bush cross the road? You guessed it! To get
to the other side! And, when he got there, to attack a sovereign nation!

There
aren't any Weapons of Mass Destruction, repeat, and slowly, there
aren't any Weapons of Mass Destruction! So my question is: "Will the Dems
take advantage of another opening given to them? It certainly would allow
them to say "We trusted you once, and it was a disaster, never again."
Seems to me this is crying out for that response, whether its the
confirmation of Gonzales, Social Security, or "Tort Reform":

Pitt:
"Just when I feel I have reached my capacity for outrage and frustration,
just when I think the sorrow and rage needle is as pegged-over as it can be,
I see articles like this one from MSNBC":

The hunt for
biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly
two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein.
The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley. In interviews,
officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence
in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort
shortly before Christmas. Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who
led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that
contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration
officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as
the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

this
is heartening here...but the proof is in action, not talk:

"But the unity of purpose also underscores a hardening of attitudes among
Democrats - from elected officials and strategists to grass-roots activists
and party constituencies - that Bush's domestic agenda presents opportunities
to divide the GOP, break apart Bush's winning coalition and recapture
some of the voters who supported Bush last fall. Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa), one
of the most combative Democrats in Congress, accused Bush of "throwing down
the gauntlet" since winning reelection. "Usually when you win you try to be
magnanimous," he said. "But everything we've heard from the president is,
'I've got a mandate,' 'I've got all this political capital,' and 'We'll
work with you as long as you agree with us.' Well, wait a minute, you mean
we have to agree to everything before they'll work with us. That's
a non-starter." "Four years ago, as a new president,
his inaugural address indicated he wanted to work with people and then he
didn't," said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.). "That Iraq experience was
the most painful. There's a much reduced expectation that you can
work with this White House or work with this Republican leadership."

Nothing gets
me more exited that introducing a new feature. Well thats not true. Introducing
the introduction of a new feature is even better!

Introducing a new feature

Writing about politics can be rather depressing at times. I can only imagine
how painful the reading of it must be. It is with this in mind that I introduce
the new feature "Jokes by Jory John." You see by adding the occasional
funny bits to my political soup de jour, I am making my blog stand out, and
dare I say it, rise above, the countless other blogs who never use sarcastic
humor and wit to liven up their posts.... Oh wait... Never mind.

Alas I digress.
Jory John is a friend of mine and owner of the fabulous web site JoryJohn.com.
He will send the jokes to me. I will post them now and again. It will be therapeutic,
you just watch.

- Jordan

Hey
Free Speech Zone readers! Get ready for a bunch absolutely original, absolutely
hilarious jokes about President Bush and his wacky administration!
Yes! Get ready! To laugh! Get your laughing-pants on. Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

And here we go:

1. Hey,
did you hear the one about George W. Bush methodically removing Americas
constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties? Gosh, it seems like pretty
soon, were going to be living in a harsh dictatorship!

2. George W. Bush walks into a bar. He gets drunk. Then he drives
home before the alcohol wears off.

3. Question: What does George W. Bush have trouble with? Answer:
Judging by his television appearances, I would be inclined to say that he
has trouble with English.

4. Question: When he was governor of Texas, why did Bush help make
Houston the most polluted city in the nation? Answer: So he could leave
a lasting legacy of contamination.

5. Hey, did you hear the one about President Bush trying to win the
war on terror? Wait, did I say war on terror? I meant war
on liberal Hollywood celebrities!

6. Question: How many Americans does it take to create a 6-percent
unemployment rate during the Bush presidency? Answer: About 2 million, give
or take a few people who dont matter much to Bush, anyway.

7. Set-up: How many war-protesters does it take to change Bushs
mind about something? Punch line: War protesters? More like un-showered
communist bastards!

Zack was the
person who got me involved in the video the vote films that are on this web
page. He got caught up in the storm and was swept away to Ohio and D.C. He
was able to witness first hand the Senate debate on the Ohio objection. What
I wouldn't give to have been there! Well he has returned from his trip and
has a lot to share with us. Lets
see what he has to say....

I'm
back from my journey which began in Columbus for a 4 hour rally with Jesse
Jackson, leading to a 6 hour bus trip from there to DC (in
which I documented the individual experiences of the disenfranchised riders),
then went on to lobbying Senators to stand up, then moved on to rallies
and protests outside the Senate, then I got tickets to the live
debate inside the Senate to watch the whole show, and finally culminated
in getting drunk with my favorite journalist in the country, William Rivers
Pitt (among others, like lawyer Susan Truitt, one of the key lawyers
working on the case against the usurpers).

So,
how do we make sense of it all? What does the final tally of 31
house Democrats and 1 courageous Democratic Senator
mean?

The
Democratic Party's performance: It's worth noting that also participatingin
the debate on the Senate floor with solid speeches detailing
what happened in Ohio, demanding election reform, and praising Boxer's challenge
were Senators Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Barak Obama, Debbie
Stabenow, Edward Kennedy, Ron Wyden, Frank Lautenberg, Dick Durbin, and
Tom Harkin. And in the House, numerous members spoke, one after another,
until the time was up. But on the other hand, those same Senators
ended up upstaining from the final vote rather than joining Boxer's challenge.
That was deeply disappointing, the old Democratic Party special
of having it both ways. With that said, I'm not going to waste
precious energy and venom on those Democrats, who at least took a first
step to defend us, and this was without Kerry and without ANY media
coverage. All I can say is Conyers, Boxer and Tubbs are
heroes in my book.

File this one under 'ooops'. Two years after we went to war with Iraq because
of the imminent threat they posed to our once great nation, what many of us
knew from the get go is finally being reported as fact. There are no WMD in
Iraq. We were lied to by our leaders. There never were any WMD.

U.S. inspectors have ended their search for weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq in recent weeks, a U.S. intelligence official told CNN.

The search ended almost two years after President Bush ordered the invasion
of Iraq, citing concerns that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass
destruction and may have hidden weapons stockpiles.

- snip -

Charles A. Duelfer, who headed the Iraq Survey Group's search for WMD in
Iraq, has returned to Iraq and is working on his final report, the official
said.

In October, Duelfer released a preliminary report finding that in March
2003 -- the United States invaded Iraq on March 19 of that year -- Saddam
did not have any WMD stockpiles and had not started any program to produce
them.

The Iraq Survey Group report said that Iraq's WMD program was essentially
destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended the country's nuclear program after the
1991 Gulf War.

Bush lied: "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities
that were used for the production of biological weapons."

Cheney Lied: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction.

Powel lied: On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical
bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers
are storing chemical munitions.

Rumsfeld lied: We know that he has an active program for the
development of nuclear weapons.

Lies lies lies!

Civilian casualty rates in Iraq may be as high as 100,000. If you combine
the casualties of both Iraq wars, and include all the deaths from the aftermath,
the lack of water and sanitation, you will see that America has caused more
death in Iraq than Saddam ever did. The old torture chamberswere simply replaced
with our own. The old rape rooms replaced with new ones with the American
seal of approval.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses
by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it
has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because
it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack.
But that grant money is earmarked for other security needs, Mayor Anthony
A. Williams (D) said in a Dec. 27 letter to Office of Management and Budget
Director Joshua B. Bolten and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Williams's
office released the letter yesterday.

Williams estimated that the city's costs for the inauguration will total
$17.3 million, most of it related to security. City officials said they
can use an unspent $5.4 million from an annual federal fund that reimburses
the District for costs incurred because of its status as the capital. But
that leaves $11.9 million not covered, they said.

"We want to make this the best possible event, but not at the expense
of D.C. taxpayers and other homeland security priorities," said Gregory
M. McCarthy, the mayor's deputy chief of staff. "This is the first
time there hasn't been a direct appropriation for the inauguration."

A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House
Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District, agreed with the
mayor's stance. He called the Bush administration's position "simply
not acceptable."

"It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District
be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay
for this instead?" said Davis spokesman David Marin.

Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales plans to promise to abide by the
government's non-torture policies and international treaties if he is confirmed
by the Senate, The Associated Press learned Wednesday.
Gonzales, who had a hand in much of the White House's post-9/11 terrorism
policies as President Bush's top lawyer, faces condemnation from Democrats
at a hearing Thursday over his January 2002 memo arguing that the war on
terrorism "renders obsolete" the Geneva Convention's strict prohibitions
against torture.

A month later, Bush signed an order declaring he has the authority to circumvent
the Geneva accords and reserving the right to do so "in this or future
conflicts." The order also says the Geneva treaty's treatment of prisoners
of war do not apply to al-Qaida or "unlawful combatants" from
the Taliban.

Gonzales' critics say that decision and Gonzales' memo justifying it led
to the torture scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and prisoner abuses in
Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

- snip -

Bush already has made clear that the government will defend Americans from
terrorists "in a manner consistent with our nation's values and applicable
law, including our treaty obligations," Gonzales says in his prepared
testimony. "I pledge that, if I am confirmed as attorney general, I
will abide by those commitments."

Right. They promised
there were WMD in Iraq too.

- Jordan

If it's not
broken, fix it till' it breaks

Social security. Now that the election is truely over, progressives should
concentrate on the issue of the social security "crisis." Notice
the quotes. That's to let you know that there is no crisis.

Bush, once again is lying to the people he serves. Social security, with only
minor changes is viable for another 40 years. Social security is in good shape.
So what is the bill deal? Well Republicans have long had wet dreams of getting
rid of Social Security. After all it goes against everything they believe.
Republicans would like to see a world where there is no system in place to
take care of people in need. You should be readin Lakoff's book "Don't
think of an Elephant." In the book Lakoff explains that the Rethugs
have tried for years to attack every liberal program that nurtures people
in need. This is a tough fight because there are so many directions they need
to go in order to attack all the liberal programs that are in place. But they
have learned there is a way to attack them all at once. By running up the
defecit to unprecidented heights, like they currently are, they effectivly
are able to cut all such programs at once.

With the defecit so high there is no extra cash for programs that liberals
would like to see funded. So education for the poor, welfare, teaching arts
in schools, all these programs become under funded. The rich are fine, no
problem there, but the poor get poorer. The devide widens. Which is the point.
Look at the language Bush is using here. Social security is in crisis, a crisis
that we must fix now. From Bush's radio adress:

"A
crisis in Social Security can be averted, if we in government take our responsibilities
seriously, and work together today. I came to Washington to solve problems,
not to pass them on to future Presidents and future generations. I campaigned
on a promise to reform and preserve Social Security, and I intend to keep
that promise. "

Fear. All fear,
all the time. Same thing he used to sell us the war in Iraq. To sweeten the
deal Bush is painting himself as the savior. Once again Read Lakkof for more
on this. But despite all of this fear mongering, Social Security is fine.
Bush will find it harder than he thought to sell us this lie. Even Republicans
are doubting what Bush has to say on Social Security.

Many Republicans
are expressing reservations about the political wisdom of President Bush's
vision for restructuring Social Security, as the White House today intensifies
its campaign to restructure the entitlement program for the retired and
disabled.

Bush, who relishes challenging the conventional wisdoms of Washington, has
privately counseled Republicans that partially privatizing Social Security
will be a boon for the GOP and has urged skeptics to hold fire until he
builds a public case for change. But several influential Republicans are
warning that Bush's plan could backfire on the party in next year's elections,
especially if the plan includes cuts in benefits.

It is nice to
know there are a few Wingers out there who still have the huevos to stand
up to Bushco. Lets take a look at what some others have to say shall we?

The new analysis
finds the program will be able to pay full scheduled benefits until 2053
- nearly fifty years into the future - with no changes whatsoever. This
means Social Security is far sounder today than it has been through most
of its existence. In the past, shortfalls in every decade from the forties
to the eighties required frequent tax increases, with the last series of
increases ending in 1990.

The new assessment is substantially more optimistic than the Social Security
trustees report issued in March. This report projected the program would
only be able to pay full benefits until 2042. The size of the shortfall
over the seventy-five year planning horizon is also considerably lower in
the CBO report. While the trustees report had projected the shortfall as
being equal to 0.73 percent of GDP over this period, the new CBO report
implies the shortfall will be equal to only approximately 0.37 percent of
GDP. By comparison, the recent increase in annual defense spending associated
with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is equal to 1.0 percent of GDP.

Ten years ago
Social Security trustees predicted that the system would become insolvent
in 35 years, meaning 2029. Five years later they were still predicting that
insolvency was 35 years away -- doomsday had been postponed to 2034. Today,
they're predicting that insolvency is 38 years away, in 2042.

What happened? Why does the insolvency date keep getting further away? How
could the trustees have been so continually wrong?

For years,
the Social Security Trustees have used very conservative assumptions about
future rates of economic growth, productivity growth, and growth of the
labor force. These assumptions, in turn, affect the projected payroll tax
collections that will fund Social Security payouts.

Five years ago, in the late 1990s, they estimated the long-term economic
growth rate at just 1.7 percent. The reality has been well over 3 percent.

Most economists now believe the economy can do a lot better than 1.7 percent
annual growth. In its 1997 report, the trustees projected that the system
would no longer be able to meet all its obligations by 2029. Just six years
later in 2003, based on their acknowledgement of stronger economic growth,
the trustees moved the crisis date back to 2042. So if the system can gain
13 years of life in six years, there's not much of a crisis.

But that's just the beginning. In June, the bipartisan Congressional Budget
office used more realistic assumptions about economic growth. CBO puts the
first shortfall year at 2052, not 2042, and it projects Social Security's
75-year shortfall at only about four-10ths of one percent of gross domestic
product. Currently, that's about $40 billion a year, or one-fifth of the
revenues that the Bush administration gave up in tax cuts for the wealthy.

Simply restoring pre-Bush tax rates on the richest one percent of Americans
could bring the Social Security system into balance indefinitely, without
reducing promised payouts by one penny.

So Social security
is fine. Bush is inventing this crisis in order to flat out do away with this
great program. There is however a crisin that Bush could be spending his 'capital'
on. Its
Iraq.

- Jordan

1/10/05

Thank
you Barbara Boxer

Barbara Boxer listened to the voice of the people and stood up to challenge
the Ohio vote. This is a very important move on her part and I hope she knows
how much all us progressives appreciate the risk she took. This was important
to do for many reasons. It forced the senate and House to face this issue
head on. Hopefully it is the first step in the process of election reform.
It also did another important thing. It forced the media to pay attention
to this issue at last. The day after the objection, in my local paper, right
there on the front page was the story that should have been there for months.

Thank
you Barbara Boxer! In case you missed it on CSPAN here
is the video of the objection.

Three
weeks before the election in Iraq, conversation has started bubbling up
in Congress, in the Pentagon and some days even in the White House about
when and how American forces might begin to disengage in Iraq.

So far it is mostly talk, not planning. The only thing resembling a formal
map to the exit door are a series of Pentagon contingency plans for events
after the Jan. 30 elections. But one senior administration official warned
over the weekend against reading too much into that, saying "the Pentagonhas
plans for everything," from a new Korean war to relief missions in
Africa.

The rumblings about disengagement have grown distinctly louder as members
of Congress return from their districts, and as military officers try to
game out how Sunni Arabs and Shiites might react to the election results.
The annual drafting of the budget is a reminder that the American presence
in Iraq is costing $4.5 billion a month and putting huge strains on the
military. And, of course, White House officials contemplate the political
costs of a second term dominated by a nightly accounting of continuing casualties.

By all accounts,
President Bush has not joined the conversation about disengagement so far,
though a few senior members of his national security team have.

Which
is a shame because it cuold help get the people a decent election.

Iraq's
most influential Sunni group will abandon its call for a boycott of Jan.
30 elections if the United States gives a timetable for withdrawing multinational
forces, a spokesman for the group said Sunday. Members of the powerful Association
of Muslim Scholars relayed their request to a senior U.S. embassy official
at a meeting Saturday, the Sunni official said on condition of anonymity.
The meeting was confirmed Saturday by U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan,
who said an unnamed senior embassy official in Iraq met with leading association
members in an effort to persuade them to participate in the landmark election
for a constitutional assembly.

Not
going to happen ...

-
Jordan

1/5/05

BREAKING
NEWS (insert
siren animation here)

From
Keith Olberman

Nothing
is in writing and daybreak is a long way away, but it appeared all but certain
in early evening Wednesday that House Democrats had secured the support
of up to half a dozen Senators to formally challenge the Electoral College
slate from Ohio, when the votes are opened before a joint session of Congress
tomorrow.

Kerry
won't back electoral challenge; Issues letter on "every vote being
counted"
The following letter was issued from Senator Kerry to Democratic supporters:
No American citizen should wake up the morning after the election and worry
their vote wasn't counted. No citizen should be denied at the polls if they
are eligible to vote. And, as the greatest, wealthiest nation on earth,
our citizens should never be forced to vote on old, unaccountable and non
transparent voting machines from companies controlled by partisan activists.More

To
top it all of and keep with the theme, I direct you to this great
Diary over at Kos
which is called:

"Kenneth
Blackwell gives his take on the Ohio election"
Ohio's Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, has finally spoken out about
the election in Ohio.
As many of you are no doubt aware, Blackwell has come under tremendous scrutiny
over the last few months due to issues concerning the election in Ohio.
Below the fold, I review some of the things he's been criticized for, summarize
some questions that were asked of him by the dems on the Judiciary Committee,
then turn to some statements he came forward with in the last week about
the election in Ohio. More

Remember
the opening scene of F911? All they needed was one Senator to sign on....

------
Forwarded Message
From : Lydia F
Just came from a group which gathered at Senator Barbara Boxer's Office
here in Fresno. There were about 20 of us representing Fresno, Visalia,
Porterville and Springville. It was awesome since they had to come to Fresno
through the rain... We were told that Senator Boxer was willing to be the
Senator who will ask for the re-election in Ohio provided she
sees numbers. This is a grassroots effort and it depends on each of
us to pass this information on. (see below for offices and phone numbers)

House
Republicans suddenly reversed course Monday, deciding to retain a tough
standard for lawmaker discipline and reinstate a rule that would force Majority
Leader Tom DeLay to step aside if indicted by a Texas grand jury.

The surprise dual decisions were made by Speaker Dennis Hastert and by DeLay
who asked GOP colleagues to undo the extreme act of loyalty they handed
him in November. Then, Republicans changed a party rule so DeLay could retain
his leadership post if indicted by the grand jury in Austin that charged
three of the Texas Republican's associates.
When Republicans began their closed-door meeting Monday night, leaders were
considering a rules change that would have made it tougher to rebuke a House
member for misconduct. The proposal would have required a more specific
finding of ethical violations.

Republicans gave no indication before the meeting that the indictment rule
would be changed. Even more surprising was DeLay's decision to make the
proposal himself.

Jonathan Grella, a DeLay spokesman, said DeLay still believed it was legitimate
to allow a leader to retain his post while under indictment. But Grella
said that by reinstating the rule that he step aside, DeLay was "denying
the Democrats their lone issue. Anything that could undermine our agenda
needs to be nipped in the bud."

President
Bush re-election campaign asked the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme
Court on Monday to throw out a challenge of the election in this swing
state, saying the case resembles "a poorly drafted script for a late
night conspiracy-theory movie."

The court filing was made as the Rev. Jesse Jackson held a rally before
hundreds of people in Columbus to support the challenge and urge the U.S.
Senate to debate Ohio's results on Thursday when Congress is in joint
session for the official tally of the electoral votes.

- snip -

"In 2000, if Al Gore had just held on and fought to the bitter end,
he would have been president," said Mark Lomax, a black Columbus
musician challenging the vote. "I kind of have the same feeling now
 whether or not you like John Kerry, that's not the issue. It's
just that your vote counts."

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell said there's no reason to prolong
the election. "Jesse Jackson can complain, grandstand, whine, stamp
his feet all he wants," said Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo. "It's
not going to change the results of Ohio's election or how voters cast
their ballots on Nov. 2."

" Kerry-Edwards will support the third-party candidates in asking the
Federal Court in the Ohio recount lawsuit to order the preservation of the
evidence obtained during the recount and to expedite discovery of the facts.
Various problems and errors have occurred in a number of Ohio's 88 county
boards of elections during the recount, which will conclude next week. The
most publicized of these problems was the machine manipulation in Hocking
County but developing evidence will reveal other problems as well. Senators
Kerry and Edwards are very concerned that the law for conducting the recount
should be uniformly followed. They want to be sure that all circumstances
involved in the Ohio election, including the recount, should be put before
the Court and disclosed to the American people. Only then, can the integrity
of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant
the public trust."If you haven't been following John Kerry closely,
get ready to hear of surprising developments. The vote-defrauded, potential
president-in-waiting has just indicated through his lawyer that the validity
of George Bush's reelection is no longer a given.

From
breakfornews.com:

On
23 December, 2004 Kerry's lawyer confirmed to MSNBC's 'Countdown'
that John Kerry will be seeking (likely
on Monday 27 Dec.) to expedite court proceedings and secure evidence in
an ongoing recount
suit by the Green and Libertarian parties. That might sound like
just another "count every vote" exercise by the Kerry campaign,
were it not for two important details.

Kerry's court
filing will conjoin him to existing allegations
that Triad GSI, a Republican-linked
supplier of voting machines to around half of Ohio counties --"orchestrated"
a covert campaign to thwart a legitimate recount in Ohio. If the allegation
proves well founded, it could invalidate
the Ohio recount and eventually even hand the presidency to John Kerry.

Which probably explains the second critical detail: a quiet, on the record
bombshell statement to 'Countdown' by Daniel Hoffheimer, the Cincinnati
lawyer representing the Kerry campaign in Ohio.

Previously, the Kerry Campaign's intent in Ohio seemed to be merely an exercise
of American civic spiritedness.

Two weeks ago, when Kerry
wrote to Ohio's 88 county boards of election asking to visually
inspect some ballots, Donald McTigue, the lawyer handling the recount for
the Kerry campaign said: "We're trying to increase the transparency
of the election process."

In early December, when the Kerry Campaign joined
a suit by Green and Libertarian party candidates seeking a recount
in Delaware County, Daniel Hoffheimer said Kerry wasn't disputing President
Bush's victory in Ohio. The aim was to make sure any recount was "done
accurately and completely," Hoffheimer said.

Hope
you all had a great Holiday. I have returned from a much needed week of
rest and relaxation and the postings will now resume. Linda Byrket's 25
minute film showing the gross imjustices done to African Americans in Ohio
is below. You can click here to jump right to
that post.

I have a lot of catching up to do and obviously a lot has happened. I will
do my best to get back up to date.

If you are in San Francisco or Boston and are looking for a place to do
some good you might want to check this out:

RALLY FOR THE REPUBLIC : A Bicoastal Town Hall on Contesting
the Election

David Lytel, founder of ReDefeat Bush (www.redefeatbush.com)
has booked Fanheuil Hall in Boston, Monday Jan. 3, and Herbst Theater in
San Francisco, Tuesday Jan. 4, for coast-to-coast "Rallies for the
Republic" to build public support, media coverage, and political momentum
leading up to a mass Rally for Democracy in Washington DC on January 6 and
the contesting of the Electoral College votes of Ohio, Florida, and other
compromised state electors in Congress on Thursday, January 6.

Dec. 30 - Ohio officials concluded their recount of the presidential vote
last Tuesdayreaffirming President George W. Bushs victory. But
the states election woes arent over yet. As bloggers continue
to spin conspiracy theories about a victory stolen from Democratic candidate
John Kerry, the Rev. Jesse Jackson plans to lead a Monday rally in Columbus
to protest alleged voting irregularities. He warmed up with NEWSWEEKs
Susannah Meadows.

NEWSWEEK:Whats the matter with Ohio?

Rev. Jesse Jackson: In Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Youngstown, Cleveland,
where I was, you had blacks standing in line for six hours in the rain.
Thats a form of voter suppression.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell says that machines were allotted
based on turnout in past years, and that he didnt realize theyd
need more machines until it was too late.

He had to know it because registration was up. Blackwell may have had to
deliver for Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney and he got a lighter rap
than [former Florida Secretary of State Katherine] Harris got. But Ohio
may have been more stacked than Florida was.

So
you think Blackwell stole the election for Bush?
It was under his domain to have enough machines; the machine calibration,
tabulation issue. You could rig the machines. We have reason to believe
it was rigged.

What is your evidence?
Based on distrusting the system, lack of paper trails, the anomaly of the
exit polls. In Ukraine, theres an exit poll gap, they say, Lets
have another election.

This video footage is a must see for everyone who feels a concern regarding
the gross injustices that took place in African American precincts in Ohio
on election day. We have done the civil rights movement in this country
already. Heck we have had to do it a few times. Yet, if you feel that everyone
is indeed equal, then you are not paying attention. Through deceitful manipulation
of information and equipment, the citizens of Ohio were often turned away
from voting booths. This footage, which is in 2 parts, is a documentation
of what took place on Nov 2nd. It is only a small part of the larger story.

The
video footage provides a first hand glimpse of what transpired in Franklin
County on Election Day, only in heavily leaning Democratic precincts, including
unexplained voting machine shortages, organized campaigns directing voters
to the wrong polling places, malfunctioning voter tabulation equipment,
election worker confusion and incompetence, and a host of other problems.
However, as detailed in an official affidavit by Richard Hayes Phillips,
a geomorphology Ph.D. from University of Oregon, the extent of voter disenfranchisement
was systematic and widespread in African American precincts throughout the
state. Dr.
Phillips sworn testimony read:

"For the second Presidential election in a row African American voters
have been subjugated to second class citizens through systematic efforts
by Republicans to suppress, intimidate, and disenfranchise our vote,"
said Rev. Bill Moss, the original Plaintiff in Ohio, and founder of the
Center for Freedom and Justice. "Whether its Katherine Harris or Kenneth
Blackwell, the purpose is the same: do everything in their power to ensure
George W. Bush becomes President. If those in power are willing and able
to thwart democracy and abuse the civil rights of American voters, right
in the face of the press and public, what wont they do? I am contesting
this election because tyranny, particularly in the guise of democracy, is
our civic duty to fight."

 E-mail or call the main stream news media outlets and demand that
they cover this story. (Contact information below)

 If you have a web page please download the footage and post it on
your site. Then e-mail me
and let me know what your web address is and I will add a link to your site.
I want as many viewing locations as I can get. Links back to http://www.thefreespeechzone.net
are greatly appreciated.

 If you have such knowledge I need someone to convert this to a non-windows
only format such as quicktime. A lower res. version would also be helpful.
If you have done this e-mail
me so I can link to these versions.

2004 Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry will file today, in the
United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, papers in
support of the Green Party/Libertarian Party recount effort. Specifically,
Kerry will be filing a request for expedited discovery regarding Triad Systems
voting machines, as well as a motion for a preservation order to protect
any and all discovery and preserve any evidence on this matter. Triad Systems
has come under scrutiny recently after Sherole Eaton, deputy director of
elections for Hocking County, swore out an affidavit in which she described
her witnessing the tampering of electronic voting equipment by a Triad representative.
Rep. John Conyers, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee,
has requested an investigation into this matter by the FBI and the Hocking
County prosecutor.

- snip -

Kerry's entry into this recount effort changes the math on this matter dramatically.
He can likewise show irreperable harm, and unlike the Green and Libertarian
candidates, he can also prove a substantial chance for success on the merits
because he lost the Ohio vote by a statistical whisker.

- snip -

Perhaps
the most significant aspect of all this, from the activist point of view,
has been the effectiveness of the telephone calls and letters to Kerry.
The activist push to get him involved had a very significant effect on his
decision to enter this effort. Likewise, calls to other Senators in order
to convince them to join House members in challenging the election have
likewise had significant effect. If such an effort continues, the activists
involved will very likely see the desired result unfold.

BAGHDAD,
Iraq (AP) - An explosion ripped through a mess tent at a military base near
Mosul where hundreds of U.S. troops had just sat down to lunch Tuesday,
and officials said more than 20 people were killed and at least 57 were
wounded.

A military spokesman said 19 of the dead were American soldiers, which would
make the attack the deadliest single strike against U.S. troops since the
start of the Iraq war.

The attack came the same day that British Prime Minister Tony Blair made
a surprise visit to Baghdad and described the ongoing violence in Iraq as
a "battle between democracy and terror."
Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, spokesman for the Coalition Press Information Center,
said 19 U.S. troops were killed, along with three other soldiers of unknown
nationality.

- snip -

Bill Nemitz, a columnist with the Portland Press Herald embedded with the
Maine National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion, told CNN there was a concrete
dining hall under construction that was supposed to be finished by Christmas.
He said he heard "a lot of discussion" among the troops about
the vulnerability of the tent.Hastings told CNN that "there is a level
of vulnerability when you go in there and you don't feel like there's a
hard - hard roof over your head, and when there's mortar attacks and explosions
that happen, there is a level of vulnerability."

The force knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats as a fireball
enveloped the top of the tent and shrapnel sprayed into the area, Redmon
said.

Amid the screams and smoke in the tent, soldiers turned their tables upside
down and used them as makeshift stretchers, Redmon said.

Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters, while others wandered
around in a daze and collapsed, he said.
"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend
hugged her.

A huge hole was blown in the roof of the tent, and puddles of blood, lunch
trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the floor, Redmon reported.

Near the front entrance, troops tended a soldier with a serious head wound,
but within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag, he said. Three
more bodies were in the parking lot.

Newly Obtained FBI Records Call Defense Departments Methods "Torture,"
Express Concerns Over "Cover-Up" That May Leave FBI "Holding
the Bag" for Abuses
NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American
Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive
Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees
in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records
including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by
the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent
Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse
of detainees is being covered up.

- snip -

The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President
directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation,
stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation
through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is urging the White House
to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release
the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from
"On Scene Commander--Baghdad" to a handful of senior FBI officials,
notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques
that the President is said to have authorized.

- snip -

The June 2004 "Urgent Report" addressed to the FBI Director is
heavily redacted. The legible portions of the document appear to describe
an account given to the FBIs Sacramento Field Office by an FBI agent
who had "observed numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian
detainees," including "strangulation, beatings, [and] placement
of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings." The document
states that "[redacted] was providing this account to the FBI based
on his knowledge that [redacted] were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses."

President
Bush (news - web sites)'s second-term plans to reshape Social Security (news
- web sites), immigration laws and other domestic programs are facing a stiff
challenge from a group that was reliably accommodating in the president's
first four years: congressional Republicans.

After
essentially rubber-stamping much of Bush's first-term agenda, many House and
Senate Republicans plan to assert themselves more forcefully to put their
mark on domestic policy in the new year, according to several lawmakers. House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) has privately criticized White House handling
of the recent intelligence bill and Bush's plan to postpone tax reform until
2006 or later. Rep. Thomas M. Davis (news, bio, voting record) III (Va.) and
others have publicly complained about the political and fiscal hazards of
overhauling Social Security. Several senators, including a few 2008 presidential
contenders, are rushing to promote their own Social Security plans to compete
with Bush's.

This is an easy way to get up to speed on concerns about election irregularities.

We have until January 6 (when Congress counts the electoral college votes)
to demand a thorough investigation of the election. Please help restore
confidence in our democracy by taking the following actions:

1)
Spread the word about http://www.ElectionFraud2004.org, and encourage other
groups to link to the site.

2) Call your Representatives and Senators and encourage them to support a
thorough investigation of the election. Capital Hotline - 1-800-839-5276.

3) Send
an email to the House Judiciary Committee encouraging them to hold
full hearings on election irregularities.

Facing a barrage of calls from the media and the public, the Sacramento County
Coroner's Office issued a statement Tuesday confirming that former investigative
reporter Gary Webb committed suicide with two gunshots to the head.

"The cause of death was determined to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds
to the head".

I'm
just sayin'....

-
Jordan

The
Free Speech Zone hits 100,000

I
was just looking at my page stats and I notice that we hit the 100,000 visitor
mark today. The counter has only been up for 8 months so that is preety good!
Thanks to every single one fo you who return to this page for a daily dose
of free speech.

Increase
the peace

-
Jordan

If
it is not broken, don't fix it

The Republicans are well under way with "Operation-Screw-Up-Every-Good-Thing-In-Our-Country."
They have launched an effort to "fix" Social Security. Now that
Bush has his "mandate" he will go about doing what Rethugs have
wanted to do for years. Destroy one of the most successful Democratic policies
ever created. They hate Social Security. It flies in the face of everything
they stand for.

The
Social Security "crisis" is manufactured; there is no crisis. To
the extent there are long-term financing problems, the president's plan will
gravely worsen them. The problem we face isn't over Social Security, which
continues to run up huge surpluses (just as it was intended to under the early-80s
reform), but that our non-Social Security budget continues to run massive
structural deficits. Or rather, it has returned to running massive structural
deficits after getting into the black in the late 1990s through the combined
exertions of a Democratic president and a Republican congress. Social Security
isn't the problem, but rather George W. Bush's reckless fiscal policy.

As anyone who has read "Don't
Think of an Elephant" will tell you, the Rethugs are using
language here. They are carefully framing the issue to make it sound like
a problem. Then they can look like the hero who fixed 'the problem' when what
they are really doing is destroying a perfectly functioning Social Service.

Note
the language used by the right to describe Social Security:

Social Security is in crisis

Social Security is an investment

They need to "fix" social Security

This
language is used to convince Americans that Social Security is at risk. When
the opposite is true. Social Security is one of the most successful social
programs in our history. Social security will work fine for decades and decades
in a healthy economy. Only minor adjustments are required.

Jeffrey
Feldman's diary over at DailyKos
goes into a great discussion on how to reframe this debate. There is great
information in the comments of this thread as well. Such as this list of phrases
Dems can use to start rephrasing this issue:

Social
Security is more solvent than the federal government

The
trust fund has a 50-year cushion

Social
Security still has enough money to pay a higher benefit in 50 years than
it does today

America's
most successful government program

Defending
Social Security

A
planned phase-out of Social Security

Renege
on the guarantee

Mend it, don't end it

Enron-style
accounting

Chicken-Little
Republicans

Bait-and-switch
scheme

Gambling
with retirement security

Social
Security casino

Corporate
welfare for Wall Street donors

Wall
Street profiteering

Get-rich-quick
scheme for Wall Street

Same
racket that bankrupted Argentina

4
out of 10 seniors in Chile (favorite privatizer example) can no longer afford
to retire

Force
today's young people to support their parents

Only
problem is that billionaires pay a lower share than the rest of us

Also
included in the diaries the great a suggestion to start e-mailing people in
the media to get them to start discussing this issue honestly. They include
a sample letter and this list of media contacts:

A
brief update on my post a few days ago about
all the letter writing going on between Blackwell and various Democrats. Well
for the second time, John Kerry has written
a letter asks Blackwell require hand counts in any county where machines
have been compromised, or have an independent expert inspect the machines.
Hocking County elections official Sherole
Eaton alleged that a Triad Election Systems representative disabled
a machine and tried to plant unverified information into the recount at the
House Judiciary Committee's election hearing Monday. The
last letter Kerry wrote, asked Blackwell to address 11 points.
Included in the list were the 93,000 spoiled ballots and the various different
standards on provisional ballots used across Ohio.

First,
Bill Moyers signs off as host of NOW with a report on the Republican media
machine (demontrates how serious an issue he believes this to be). TONIGHT!
at 9PM on PBS (check local listings). He's the best there ever was (in my
opinion)

"I'm
going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how
the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican
National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election
of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line.
Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the
American people."

"Our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than
it could survive 'half slave and half free."
from Moyerson America

Watch
the two minute testimony of David Cobb before Congress the other day...to
see it adds to its power:I
sent this yesterday, and for those that didn't read it I
STRONGLY urge you to do so this time around. Its seriously unbvelievable...well,
not so much if you've been reading my emails for the past 6 weeks, but now
its all documented: Ivins
on the environment and all of us pesky "Reality-Based Community Members".
She writes: "But in fact, the "villains" in global warming are not environmentalists,
but scientists. They are the ones trying to "scare" us by making us aware
of the problem, which is reality-based. Yet another study ­ by 300 scientists
with the International Arctic Science Committee ­ - finds: * Average winter
temperatures in the Arctic are up by 4 to 7 degrees over the past 50 years and
now projected to rise by 7 to 14 degrees over the next 100 years. * Ej
Dionne on the deteriorating freedom of the press and the intimidation of reporters...c'mon
Ej, you're almost there...he's got the right subject...time to relate it
to this election! This is good though, but we need the Ivins, Scheer's,
Krugmans, Herbert's, and Dowd's to start writing on what's going on in Ohio
before its too late. There's enough there for them not to fear losing their
jobs and being destroyed by the right wing machine now.SUDAN:
The Hundred Days of Inaction

Tomorrow
marks one hundred days since Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that
abuses being committed in Darfur constitute
genocide. As a signatory to the Genocide Convention, the United States
is obligated both to prevent acts of genocide and to punish perpetrators. Yet,
with the death toll having surpassed
70,000 and more than two million people in urgent need of humanitarian
aid, the United States is
failing every day in its responsibility to protect the innocent victims
of Darfur. The United States must do more to end the genocide; but we must
also act now on our responsibility to hold the perpetrators accountable. There
are a several courses of action available: the United States can agree to
act immediately on the recommendations of the UN
Commission of Inquiry that is charged with investigating human rights
violations in Sudan; it can set aside funding to establish a truth commission
or war crimes tribunal; it can vote to refer the case from the UN Security Council
to the International Criminal Court. What the Unites States cannot
afford to do is nothing.

-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Introducing a new regular feature. Zack, who I mentioned yesterday, (Greens
for Kerry) sends out this very thorough compilation of links covering
many of the stories you have been hearing about. More importantly, there will
be some you haven't heard about at all.

Huffington
writes an epic expose of this criminal war, the sickening treatment
of our troops by this "War President", and the galling silence by
the Democrats in not attacking this administration and its handling
of Iraq everyday, all day. Read this
one

And
for those that didn't see John Conyers on Olbermann of MSNBC
I highly recommend you go to his site and check it out. He was excellent,
and made all the arguments i've been these past weeks...or months now.
Best of all, he said if enough evidence is found, HE WILL CONTEST
THE ELECTION RESULTS. There are a few courageous leaders still left.
Check
out Olbermann's blog and see the video if you can.

Hightower
discusses the wonderful world of working at Merck, another corporate
criminal...but with a hell of a golden parachute for the corporate execs
(and bye bye to the 30,000 other workers). But in the rest of america
still no minimum wage hike, healthcare coverage, or even ergonomic protections.
So, if you drive a corporation into the ground, all the workers get fired
and you get millions, seems fair to me.

This
is too good...I almost passed out when I saw Bush
award the medal of freedom, the highest honor an american can receive,
to three of the biggest failures in american foreign affairs history
(certainly 2 of them = Paul Bremer and George Tenet). Hell, maybe someone
should go take a dump on the steps of the White House, that must be worth
at least a Silver Star these days:

Email
Barbara Boxer and ask that she joins the god damn fight over the second
theft ofan election
in a row...what more does she need? We have affidavits, we have
testimony, we have exit polls, we have congressional members asking FBI
participation, and on and on. Its okay Boxer, you can come out now, you
have enough cover to take on the corporate media, the right wing propaganda
machine, and the Republican party now (those are, in the end, why Democrats
are so scared to step up on the election fraud issue...the powers that would
be against them):

Boys
And Their Toys: More Missile Defense Flops

The
Bush administration's rush to deploy a costly, unproven national missile
defense system "suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday when an interceptor
missile failed
to launch during the first flight test of the system in two years."
Pentagon officials could not immediately explain the reason for the failure,
which cast fresh doubt on the feasibility of a system that "by some accounts
has cost
$130 billion and is scheduled to tally $50 billion more over
the next five years." The previous test, in December 2002, "also flopped
when the kill vehicle failed to separate from the booster." The most recent
failure comes as reports surface indicating there are questions about another
"major acquisition program" being pushed by the Bush administration. That
classified program, the details of which are unclear, is believed to
involve a "$9.5
billion spy satellite system that could take photographs only in daylight
hours and in clear weather." (For more on this issue, read
this
new report, "The Road To Nuclear Security," by American Progress's
Lawrence Korb.)

Greens for Kerry
did some great work leading up to the election and have continued to do so to
this day. They are doing us all a great service by helping get the word out
about the current voting fraud situation in Ohio and other states.

Visit their web site and pass it to a friend. From their web site:

We
are proud members of the Green Party, guided by its ten key values, including
social justice, protection of the environment, civil rights, women's rights
and sustainability. To protect our nation and preserve a healthy future -
economically, socially, environmentally and morally, we must defeat George
W. Bush. We urge all Greens and Nader voters in swing states to vote strategically
and join with people of all political stripes, united in our concern for America's
future, and support John Kerry for President.

Zack
over at GFK passed on to me this Press Release that is being distributed Nationwide.
It will bring you up to date on the shenanegins currently under way in Ohio:

"Greens for Kerry" (GFK), a national, grassroots campaign founded
in the spring of 2004 sent an alert to thousands of supporters on Monday questioning
the legitimacy of the presidential election. The group urged supporters to
contact their elected representatives and support Democratic Congressman John
Conyers request for an FBI investigation into widespread accusations
of Republican fraud, intimidation, and voter suppression, particularly in
the state of Ohio, and particularly in the case of Triad Systems. Adding to
the controversy is the fact that Ohios Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell,
whos been stifling the investigation at every turn, also served as President
Bushs Ohio Campaign Co-Chair.

"The sworn testimonies being submitted to the Congressional Judiciary
Committee are astounding and strike at the heart of the credibility of our
democracy. We urge Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Greens alike to
look at the evidence for themselves," said Sarah Newman, Founder of Greens
for Kerry. "The Republican efforts to steal another election dwarf those
made in 2000 in Florida. Information coming out today regarding Triad Systems
is truly remarkable. Unfortunately, the mainstream press and the Democratic
Party remain largely silent. We want to help change that."

They
also sent out a newsletter
(as a word document here)dealing
with this same information. Greens For Kerry has my upmost respect for charging
ahead on this story when the Main Stream Media seems mostly silent. Vote fraud
it seems is not newsworthy here. Unless of course it is in the Ukraine. Greens
For Kerry and the left wing blogs are hoping to change all that......

Forward
this information Liberally

-
Jordan

Conyers
and Blackwell: Pen Pals

So
Conyers and other Democrats wrote a letter a while back asking Blackwell to
respond to 34 questions
regarding irregularities in the vote in Ohio. Read the entire
letter here.

Blackwell
has responded to the letter responded and you can read it here. The
short version is "screw you, you're only a congressman I don't have to
do anything you say, go way and we will call you if we need you".

Conyers
hit right back with a letter that basically said "Stop being such
a thick headed prick and cough up the answers to the questions we asked".

Conyers then, knowing the chances of Blackwell actually answering the questions
are about as good as the chances of Sean Hannity letting a Democrats speak for
more than 2 seconds, decided to raise the bar on the whole letter writing thing
and wrote directly to the FBI. His
letter to the FBI is here.

The letter goes into some deatail about the alleged tampering of vote counting
equipment by a representative of Triad. Triad equptment was used throughout
the state of Ohio to tabulate the votes.Heres a snippet of the letter:

On December
13, my staff met with Ms. Eaton who explained to them that last Friday, December
10, Michael Barbian, Jr., a representative of Triad GSI unilaterally sought
and obtained access to the voting machinery and records in Hocking County, Ohio,
modified the computer tabulator, learned which precinct was planned to be the
subject of the initial test recount and made further alterations based on that
information, and advised the election officials how to manipulate the machinery
so that the preliminary hand recount matched the machine count. Ms. Eaton first
relayed this information to Green Party representatives, and then completed,
signed and notarized an affidavit describing this course of events, a copy of
which is attached.

The Triad official sought access to the voting machinery based on the apparent
pretext that he wanted to review some legal questions the officials
might receive as part of the recount process. At several times during this visit,
Mr. Barbian telephoned into Triads offices to obtain programming information
relating to the machinery and the precinct in question. I have subsequently
learned that Triad officials have been, or are in the process of intervening
in several other counties in Ohio - Greene and Monroe, and perhaps others.

Triad
Systems, just
like Diebold, are major supporters of the republican party. Triad is
owned by a man named Tod Rapp, who has donated money to both the Republican
Party and the election campaign of George W. Bush. Triad manufactures punch-card
voting systems, and also wrote the computer program that tallied the punch-card
votes cast in 41 Ohio counties last November...

The
Main Stream Media chimes in:

NY
Times

Lawmaker
Seeks Inquiry Into Ohio Vote
The ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative
John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, plans to ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and a county prosecutor in Ohio today to explore "inappropriate and likely
illegal election tampering" in at least one and perhaps several Ohio
counties.

The request for an investigation, made in a letter that was also provided
to The New York Times, includes accounts from at least two county employees,
but is based largely on a sworn affidavit provided by the Hocking County deputy
director of elections, Sherole Eaton.

Among other things, Ms. Eaton says in her affidavit that a representative
of Triad Governmental Systems, the Ohio firm that created and maintains the
vote-counting software in dozens of Ohio counties, made several adjustments
to the Hocking County tabulator last Friday, in advance of the state's recount,
which is taking place this week.

The
Washington Post

Ohio
offers lessons for 2008
Several factors contributed to 'lost' voters.
Tanya Thivener's is a tale of two voting precincts in Franklin County. In
her city neighborhood, which is vastly Democratic and majority black, the
38-year-old mortgage broker found a line snaking out of the precinct door.

advertisementShe stood in line for four hours -- one hour in the rain -- and
watched dozens of potential voters mutter in disgust and walk away without
casting a ballot. Afterward, Thivener hopped in her car and drove to her mother's
house, in the vastly Republican and majority white suburb of Harrisburg. How
long, she asked, did it take her to vote?

1.
80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold
and ES&S.SourceSource

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight
of the U.S. voting machine industry.SourceSource

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are
brothers.SourceSource

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer
and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver
its electoral votes to the president next year."SourceSource

5.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S.
He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.SourceSource

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family,
was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics
Committee.SourceSourceSource

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential
candidates.SourceSource

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S.
and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.SourceSource

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of
any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming
out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.SourceSource

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines,
all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.SourceSource

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers
to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes
in 30 states.SourceSource

13. Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer
on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft
in the first degree.SourceSource

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting
back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication"
to evade detection over a period of 2 years.SourceSource

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the
polls in Ohio.SourceSource

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security
was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be
hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See
the movie here )SourceSource

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen
voting machines with no paper trail.Source

18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and
reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.SourceSourceSourceSourceSource

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's
brother.SourceSource
20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush
-- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further
investigation.SourceSourceSourceSourceSourceSource

-
Jordan

"we
are not robots, we are not mindless"

"some of us are willing to stand up"

Michael Moore has two great film clips on Pablo Paredes on his web page.

On
December 6, 2004, Navy Petty Officer Third Class Pablo Paredes, 23, refused
to board a San Diego ship taking 3,000 Marines to Iraq. Instead, he wore a
T-shirt stating "LIKE A CABINET MEMBER, I RESIGN" and did just that.

Pablo
Paredes has chosen to present a conscientious objection to serving in war.
On Monday of this week, he chose not to join his ship in San Diego that was
headed to the Persian Gulf. We would like your help in drawing national attention
to his cause and message. The objections soldiers voiced directly to Rumsfeld,
the resignation of the Secretary of Veteran Affairs and the overall conscientious
objections of various military members is proof positive that he is not alone.

Moore
has given a voice to many veterans who are not happy with the way our 'leaders'
have handled the war in Iraq. His new book "Will
They Ever Trust Us Again?" is full of letters from troops speaking
out about about the situation in Iraq. There are many more letters to read on
his
web page.

Hopefully we have reached a turning point. More and more we see troops speaking
out against the war. Fewer and fewer volunteers are enlisting, more desertions
every day.

Now, I know Bill O'Reilly's looking out for you. For all of us, really. But
how about he look out for the present, rather than harp on former President
Clinton?

For example, do you know how many Reagan administration officials were convicted
(and not indicted, I mean convicted) of crimes for their misdealings while
they were in office? Thirty. Do you know how many Clinton Administration officials
were convicted? One. And that was the Secretary of Agriculture's Chief of
Staff, and that was a case that involved football tickets.

Yes our leaders are considering using PsyOps on you. While this comes as no
surprise to me, I was a bit surprised to see it in the paper. They have used
psychological operations to influence public opinion for a long time. This is
nothing new. The whole lead up to the war, with the media spewing forth the
garbage the white house gave them is a good example. Another example is when
the Pentagon
used CNN to try and trick the insurgents in Fallujah that an attack
was underway, so that the US military could observe what happened. Just remember
this article when you start seeing media reports that everything in Iraq is
peaches and cream.

The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and
should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad,
senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say.

Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for
use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda
campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations.

Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's
credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of
anything the Defense Department and military say - a repeat of the credibility
gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War.

The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between
public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches - whose charters
call for giving truthful information to the media and the public - and the
world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations.

Mr. web was found in his apartment with a gun shot wound to the head. The authorities
are calling it a suicide. Gary was best known for his articles criticizing the
CIA

Mr.
Webb wrote in The San Jose Mercury News in 1996 that Nicaraguan drug traffickers
had sold crack cocaine in black neighborhoods and used the profits to finance
the operations of the contras, the C.I.A.-supported guerrillas who were fighting
the leftist government in Nicaragua.

They
say crack kills. Well acusing the CIA of selling crack, also can kill.

- Jordan

Shenanigans
in Ohio Recount

David Cobb, Green Party presidential candidate, had shocking things to say at
the Democratic House Judiciary Committees Columbus hearings Monday. Cobb
alleged that a voting company representative tampered with voting equipment
in Columbus last Friday and attempted to plant false information into the Ohio
recount.

Cobb says that a witness, who had requested not to be named, watched as a representative
of Triad Systems entered the Columbus Board of Elections building unannounced
and tampered with a vote tabulator which then lost all data. Ooops.

Cobb then said that the representative tried to convince employees to post false
information so that it would appear as if the data was valid and had never been
lost.

This following is a transcript Cobbs speech as recorded by Inside Track
News broadcast. You can also listen to this portion as an MP3
file

A representative from Triad Systems came into this countys Board
of Elections office unannounced, that is on this Friday. He said he
was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the upcoming recount.

He then headed into the back room where Triad supplies tabulators, that
is the machine that counts the ballots, is kept. This Triad representative
told them that there was problem with the system, that the system had a bad
battery and it had lost all its data.

He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out
of it. And in another [incomprehensible] in the room. And he had spare parts
in his coat, as one of the people moved in [sic] remarked how very heavy it
was.

He finally reassembled everything and said it was working but not to
turn it off. He then asked which precinct would be counted in the 3 percent
recount test and that one which had been selected as if it had the right number
of votes was relayed to him he then went back and did something else to the
tabulator.

The Triad Systems representative suggested that since the hand recount
had to match the machine count exactly and since it would hard to memorize
the several numbers which would be needed to get the count exactly right,
that they should post this series of numbers on the wall where they would
not be noticed by observers such as to make them look like employee information
or something similar.

The people doing the hand count could then he said just report those
numbers no matter what the actually counted in the ballot. This would then
match the tabulator report for this precinct exactly.

Minority leader of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.)
replied, David Cobb, I need to you to arrange a meeting with our staff
immediately.

In
one exit poll affidavit, Jonathan David Simon, an expert witness, notes that
at 12:53 a.m. the exit polls altered the projected winner  even though
the same number of votes had been cast. "Although each update reports
the same number of respondents (872), the reported results differ significantly,
with the latter (12:53 a.m.) exit poll results apparently having been brought
into congruence with the tabulated vote results." In other words, the
exit polls were made to conform to a political decision to declare Bush the
victor.

Another exit poll affidavit, filed by Ron Paul Baiman, an economist and statistician
at the University of Illinois and University of Chicago, said the swing in
national exit poll results, recorded at 12:33 a.m., when Kerry was winning
with 50.8 percent of the vote, to Bush winning with 51.2 percent, was, "in
lay terms, impossible."

"This is more than a 100 percent swing in the other direction of the
exit poll margin, he said. "There is less than a one in 25,000,000 (1/25,507,308)
chance of this occurring."

Another affidavit by Richard Hayes Phillips, a geomorphology Ph.D. from University
of Oregon with a special expertise in spotting anomalous data, found dramatic
examples of erroneous voting patterns  with votes taken away from Kerry
- that can only be explained by computer manipulation.

Ken Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of the State AND Head of the Bush/Cheney Election
campaign in Ohio, will notify Bush's Ohio electors to cast their deciding votes
for Bush on Dec. 13. But attorney John Bonifaz says Blackwell's premature certification "must
be stopped," according to the Toledo Blade:

"Those
people have not been chosen until the recount process has been completed,"
said John Bonifaz, founder and general counsel of the National Voting Rights
Institute in Boston.

Mr. Bonifaz charged that Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, associate
chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign in Ohio, has "actively
engaged in thwarting the recount law" by delaying certification of the
official statewide results until tomorrow...

"Mr. Blackwell is doing everything he can to push through a slate of
electors based on an untested initial count of the vote. He must be stopped,"
Mr. Bonifaz told 500 people at a rally organized by a coalition of liberal
activist groups. A recount is expected to take 5 to 11 days and probably won't
be finished before Dec. 13, Mr. LoParo said...

If a recount shows a Kerry win, a different set of electors would vote, Mr.
Bonifaz said. "If that happens, the United States Congress will receive
the votes of two competing sets of electors from the state of Ohio when it
convenes on Jan. 6 to formally receive the Electoral College vote," he
said.

"We
can stand by while our democracy erodes around us, or we can stand up and fight,
For the dignity of our nation; and for the dignity of ourselves; and for the
memory of those who struggled before us, we must choose to fight." .......- John Bonifaz

-
Jordan

Let
the challenge begin

Today is a big news day for the ongoing election debacle story. Many of us have
followed this story for weeks, but now it seems the story is breaking wide open.
Kerry came out of hiding and publicly asked for a recount. The
letteraddresses eleven points. Here is a taste of the things being
requested:

1)
93,000 spoiled ballots.
2) Judge Connelly getting more votes than Kerry in Southern Ohio on optical
scanner machines.
3) Different standards on provisional ballots used across Ohio.
4) a NONPARTISAN audit of the electronic voting machines, having independent
analysis of the software.
5) Allow the Kerry team to visually inspect the 92,000 ballots cast in Ohio
in which no vote for president was recorded, a Kerry lawyer said Sunday night.

Kerry,
it seems, was waiting around for the right time to jump in. Well today
was that day. It appears he was waiting for Arnebeck
to file his lawsuit challenging the election results, and for enough
evidence to be gathered before he came out publicly. Meanwhile this letter from
Conyers, and others was to Ohio state legislators asking for a delay of today's
deadline for the electoral vote.

"Secretary
Blackwell gave county boards of election until December 1 to certify their
returns, and then waited to declare his own results on December 6. As a consequence,
recounts may be sought at least until December 11 and must begin by December
16. It is impossible, therefore, for the December 6 results to be the official
certification of the State of Ohio. The law providing a right to a recount
would be an empty right in this scenario."

Apparently,
this investigation will involve enough votes "to possibly change the outcome"
of the presidential election.

Congressional Democrats and challengers of Ohio's presidential election results
asked state officials Monday to delay the Electoral College vote until the
challenge is decided and a recount completed.

- snip -

Hours before the Ohio delegation's meeting Monday, the challengers asked the
Ohio Supreme Court to review the election outcome. If the court decides to
hear the challenge, it can declare a new winner or throw out the results.

Democrat John Kerry is asking county elections officials to allow his witnesses
to inspect the 92,000 ballots cast in Ohio in which no vote for president
was recorded, a Kerry lawyer said Sunday night.

- snip -

"We're trying to increase the transparency of the election process,"
said Donald McTigue, the lawyer handling the recount for the Kerry campaign.
But he added that several requests such as using independent experts to check
election equipment, "are trying to push the edge of envelope."

- snip -

McTigue said the visual inspection is allowed under state law. The goal is
to look for potential votes that were not registered by the tabulating equipment.

Dissident groups asked the Ohio Supreme Court on Monday to review the outcome
of the state's presidential race, hours before the Ohio delegation to the
Electoral College was to cast ballots for president and vice president.

The groups question whether President Bush won the key swing state by 119,000
votes, guaranteeing his victory over Democrat John Kerry.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and attorney Cliff Arnebeck of the Massachusetts-based
Alliance for Democracy accused President Bush's campaign of ''high-tech vote
stealing.''

Jackson said the challengers noticed Bush generally received more votes in
counties that use optical-scan voting machines and questioned whether the
machines were calibrated to record votes for Bush.

The dissidents claim there were disparities in vote totals for Democrats,
too few voting machines in Democrat-leaning precincts, organized campaigns
directing voters to the wrong polling place and confusion over the counting
of provisional ballots by voters whose names did not appear in the records
at polling places.

yesterday
Rummy claimed the army was doing everything it could to get armor on Humvees
in Iraq. Needless to say that was BS.

Armor
Holdings Inc., the sole supplier of protective plates for the Humvee military
vehicles used in Iraq, said it could increase output by as much as 22 percent
per month with no investment and is awaiting an order from the Army.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday the Army was working
as fast as it can and supply is dictated by a matter of physics, not
a matter of money.'

Jacksonville, Florida-based Armor Holdings last month told the Army it could
add armor to as many as 550 of the trucks a month, up from 450 vehicles now,
Robert Mecredy, president of the companys aerospace and defense group
said in a telephone interview today.

Were prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per month,'
Mecredy said in the interview. Ive told the customer that and
I stand ready to do that.'

During
yesterday's hearing in DC, the all-encompassing point was delivered by Jonathan
Simon, Political Survey Research Analyst and the person who downloaded the
pure exit polling data CNN before it was altered to match end results. This
is the same data analyzed by Stephen Freeman that determined that Bush
had more of a chance of winning THREE jackpot lotteries on the night of 11/2
than enjoying the late swinging of the votes so drastically (odds 250 million
to one). Please note that all aberrations favor the same candidate.

Mr. Simon astutely points out that we all face a Catch-22 scenario when the
majority party will not change a rigged voting system that put them there
and will keep them in power.

WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing initial claims for jobless pay
grew unexpectedly last week to 357,000, Labor Department data showed on Thursday,
but an official said an increase in the week after a public holiday was typical.

A Reuters poll of analysts had forecast first-time claims for state unemployment
benefits would fall to 335,000 in the week ended Dec. 4 from 349,000 the previous
week, which had been shortened by Thanksgiving Day.

But rising claims for two consecutive weeks has returned them to the highest
level since late September, the Labor Department said.
The four-week moving average of filings, which smoothes weekly fluctuations
to provide a better picture of underlying trends, advanced 4,750 to 341,250,
also marking its second straight weekly increase.
Thursday's release comes after some disappointing news on U.S. employment.
Only 112,000 new jobs were created in November - much less than expected --
and U.S. firms reported a rise in the number of planned job cuts last month.

The number of unemployed on the benefit rolls after claiming an initial week
of aid grew 91,000 to 2.796 million in the week ended Nov. 27, the latest
for which figures are available.

Anyone
who is surprised by this, is in serious denile. The
Bush economy is bad news for America.

CA: The best part about it was that it happened.
If you look at who was here, you had leaders from the generally white political
reform movement, and leaders from the black civil rights movement. This is a
powerful coalition. Normally, what has happened it the blacks have fought their
civil rights struggle, with their numbers being the predominant part of it.
Whites have been fighting for political reform, and talk about it as affecting
everyone, but don't have the black roots participating. What Reverend Jackson
has done, has said, is, you know, you look foolish talking about your civil
rights being abused. We are going to be there with you.

We have formed a coalition, and are building the infrastructure,
not just to address this election, but to continue to address the legislation
and litigation issues that arise. We have joined together, and this is a new
and powerful coalition. We are not talking about one group having dominance
over the other, but a real partnership of the traditional political reform community
with the traditional civil rights community, and Reverend Jackson is the one
that proposed it, has initiated the organization of it.

Bill Moss, who was here and testified, has been designated
to be the leader of this new coalition for Ohio. He had leading black ministers
from all over the state in the room, and was in the office of Common Cause Ohio
when this happened. Bill Moss will be the lead plaintiff or contester on the
complaint that is going to be filed tomorrow. We are working together, and it's
a powerful coalition that will make things happen.

WP: You are working with Jon Bonifaz on the lawsuit.

CA: I am working with Mr. Bonifaz in the capacity
of a client. I am chair of the legal committee for Common Cause Ohio, and in
that capacity I authorized Jon Bonifaz to represent our group. With national
approval, he's representing Common Cause in aspects of the recount litigation.
Jon Bonifaz is also a professional friend and colleague of mine for many, many
years in the political reform movement, so I would have been seeking his counsel
and advice, and working with him, even if we didn't have that connection. He
is a superb lawyer.

I have tremendous respect for Jon. As you probably know,
Jon is the lawyer that stepped out of the National Voting Rights Institute to
file litigation on behalf of Dennis Kucinich and others challenging the constitutionality
of the Iraq War Resolution. That was a tremendous job, and I told him that my
children and my grandchildren will thank him for having done that.

WP: What specific information will you be bringing
to the lawsuit? You mentioned earlier some data that suggested that the so-called
margin of victory for Bush stands to be erased by the information being presented
in this suit. Can you elaborate?

CA: First of all, from a jurisdictional standpoint,
an election contest is not simply a proceeding where you say, "Hey, there
were these problems. The long lines resulted in at least 15,000 people not voting."

WP: You're talking about specificity?

CA: Let's assume you could prove it statistically.
You say 15,000 did not vote and the likelihood of their voting would have been
75% for Kerry. That's not enough to contest an election. Unless you have enough
in the way of votes so that it actually goes to the question of what was the
true outcome, the true result, who was the winner, you can be thrown out for
not having proper evidence for an election contest.

We believe, based upon these multiple levels of statistical
analysis, the statistical anomalies, that in that area alone there is a basis
to say the result of the election was statistically opposite of what has been
reported. That's without even going into the horrendous civil rights violations
and saying, "Here's the evidence to show that these people, had they been
able to vote, would have voted the other way."

In the challenge, we will also be...People for the American
Way has a separate suit in the court of appeals in Cuyahuga County in Ohio which
is designed to readdress this question of the provisional ballots, that they
should be counted if they were cast in the right county. We want to raise that,
we want to have that counted as part of the proper count.

WP: When will your suit be filed?

CA: What I said originally was, "As soon
as possible." We were even going to file it before certification. We are
certainly hoping, and feeling very pressed, to file it tomorrow, because the
meeting of the Electoral College is supposed to occur on the 13th, and we want
to be filed and discussing that issue in court sufficiently in advance to affect
that situation.

WP: What can people do to help?

CA:: Get involved. It is really important that
the public be aware of this. make it clear to anyone exercising authority in
this matter that we are aware of this, so that when the Supreme Court is thinking
about it, or Congress is thinking about it, or Bush is thinking about it, or
Kerry is thinking about it, they know the public is aroused, the public values
its right to vote, the public insists upon honesty in our elections and the
rule of law, and we will not tolerate fraud in this important matter.

Jesse Jackson, as you could see today, is giving tremendous
moral leadership to this. He has tremendous credibility. This is a man who walked
with Dr. Martin Luther King in the long civil rights struggle that we honor
so much in our history now. This is the man who was holding Dr. King when he
died.

WP: Jackson summoned the memory of Selma today while
describing this issue.

CA: I was sitting right next to him when he talked
about the fact that there aren't members of Congress with children dying in
Iraq, and tears were in his eyes. This is a man who feels this stuff deeply,
and when he talks about what is at stake, he means it in the deepest part of
his being. It shows, and people respect that, and I feel privileged to be associated
with him in this struggle. It is a struggle for democracy, and we can't let
anyone get away with treating our elections as though it is too late to change
things, as though they got away with it and there is nothing to be done about
it.

Donald
Rumsfeld still incompetent and other stories form Iraq

Mr. Rumsfeld showed a complete lack of sensitive towards the troops in a question
and answer portion of his recent visit to kuwait. As the battle for the hearts
and minds (hearts in this pile minds in that pile) continues in Iraq, the soldiers
grow increasingly frustrated by the lack of support they get, both on the field
and back at home (that is if they are lucky enough to be let to return home).
Rumsfeld was asked a few tough question and showed very little sympathy in his
answers:

"Why
do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal
and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked.
A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar
who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

Rumsfeld replied that, "You go to war with the Army you have," ...

And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of
combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is
the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed
hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.

"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still)
be blown up," Rumsfeld said.

You
insensitive bastard! These people are willingly going into a war started for
lies and profit and when asked why the army won't spend the money to protect
them, he replies that even if they did you might die anyway? Well that just
makes me feel so warm inside! I think Ill go roast some chestnuts over a burning
humvee. Could he be more incompetent? Can we afford another 4 years of this
fool?

Heres
some audio of the question and answer period. Worth a listen to hear
the troops roar with approval when the tough questions are asked.

Rumsfeld
says in the audio clip that they are armoring vehicles as fast as they can.
Which provides me with a nice segue to this next story.

The
Army has acknowledged that it miscalculated the intensity of the guerrilla
war in Iraq and subsequently goofed on the number of armored Humvees it needed.
"We do not have as many armored Humvees as we would like," the Army's
vice chief of staff testified before Congress in late September.

So how is the White House proposing to deal with this? By underfunding the
program to armor Humvees.

Well
as if that wasn't enough there is another story coming out of Iraq today. We
went in to Iraq for many reasons. One was to close the torture prisons Saddam
had set up in his country. Granted we, the American 'liberators' simply re-opened
them under new leadership, but one would think, that since we are there to end
such atrocities, that troops who come forward with information that the army
is torturing detainees in an unjust manner, would be rewarded. Or at least such
complaints would be heard taken seriously. Well, it seems that that is not the
case. (note the salon story requires a subscription or you need to watch the
advertisement)

A veteran sergeant who told his commanding officers that he witnessed his
colleagues torturing Iraqi detainees was strapped to a gurney and flown out
of Iraq -- even though there was nothing wrong with him.
On June 15, 2003, Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford, a counterintelligence
agent in the California National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence (M.I.)
Battalion stationed in Samarra, Iraq, told his commanding officer, Capt. Victor
Artiga, that he had witnessed five incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi
detainees at his base, and requested a formal investigation. Thirty-six hours
later, Ford, a 49-year-old with over 30 years of military service in the Coast
Guard, Army and Navy, was ordered by U.S. Army medical personnel to lie down
on a gurney, was then strapped down, loaded onto a military plane and medevac'd
to a military medical center outside the country.

-snip-

Col. C. Tsai, a military doctor who examined Ford in Germany and found nothing
wrong with him, told a film crew for Spiegel Television that he was "not
surprised" at Ford's diagnosis. Tsai told Spiegel that he had treated
"three or four" other U.S. soldiers from Iraq that were also sent
to Landstuhl for psychological evaluations or "combat stress counseling"
after they reported incidents of detainee abuse or other wrongdoing by American
soldiers.

5)
Dig Your Own Hole
Moral Values Watch: The far-right fringe is on the march! Flushed with success
after being told repeatedly by the media that they were responsible for George
W. Bush's recent election victory, the "moral majority" is already
starting to over-reach.

Take Alabama's Rep. Gerald Allen, (R-Cottondale), for example. First he tried
to ban gay marriage - but that wasn't enough. Now he's filed a bill to ban
public libraries from stocking novels featuring gay characters. "Our
culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," he
said last week during a press conference to promote his bill - and obviously
banning books is the answer. You know, that kinda rings a bell...

Anyway,
the good news is that Rep. Allen doesn't actually want to burn the books.
When asked what he planned to do with them, he
said, "I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them."
Good thinking, Gerald - that ought to put an end to the sin of homosexuality
once and for all!

Not so much any more. When I see a headline like "Bush sets out plan to
dismantle 30 years of environmental laws" I think of it as business as
usually for this administration. Calling Al Gore! Anyone seen Gore?

In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that they
will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most important environmental
laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas drilling, and reshape the official
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures - which, ironically,
will overturn a legislative system originally established by the Republican
Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford - even though Mr Bush went out of
his way to avoid emphasizing his environmental plans during his campaign.

"The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda,"
said Mike Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that
over a third of the agency's staff will become eligible for retirement over
the President's four-year term, enabling him to fill it with people lenient
to polluters.

If
that didn't make you just want to cry they end the article on this high note:

"We
will now see an assault on the law which will set the US in the direction
of becoming a Third World country in terms of environmental protection."

In
over thirty years of practicing environmental law, I have not seen anything
like this. Not even the historic battles with the likes of Interior Secretary
James Watt and EPA Administrator Anne Burford Gorsuch in the Reagan Administration
can compare. The current administration is far more clever, disciplined, and
deceptive in what it says and does than its predecessors. It has also been
more effective, due to a Republican-controlled Congress, an enfeebled Democratic
Party, a distracted public, and an ambivalent media. Because of this environment,
there has not been an open debate on the future of environmental policy. Rather,
the Bush Administration has been able to make sweeping environmental changes
through a stealth campaign, masquerading under sly euphemisms like "Healthy
Forests," "Clear Skies," "No Net Loss," "Stewardship
Contracts," and "Sound Science."

For
good information on how this stealth campaign of Black is White works you should
be reading George
Lakoff.

While
the American public has been preoccupied with the issues of jobs, health care,
and the "War on Terrorism," the Bush Administration has enjoyed
a rare window of opportunity to roll back environmental policies and regulations.
These changes were made possible because there was no coherent opposition
party in Congress and little public knowledge about what these changes actually
meant for the protection of public health and the environment.

Clinton
had done such great things for our environment. It is hard to watch all that
be dismantled. The Clinton had a "can do' approach. Bush has a "can't
do" approach. That approach is bad for millions of Americans, its
bad for all the companies that want to do the right thing and invest in cleaner
technologies, its bad for our economy, and its bad for our standing
in the world.

1)
Drink a nice clean glass of water.
2) Get that gas mask you've been putting off buying.
3) Take a walk in Yosemite, without being hit by a snowmobile or a base-jumper.
4) Take photographs of animals on the endangered species list.
5) Visit Florida before the polar ice caps melt.
6) Visit Nevada before it becomes radioactive.
7) Visit Alaska before "The Big Spill."